User:Peteforsyth/Mom

Here's a rough translation of my mom's bio on Bulgarian Wikipedia, as of December 2021:

= Martha Forsyth =

Infobox
Martha Forsyth American folklorist Born 1940 (81) Dayton, USA Education Radcliffe Website martha.forsyths.org Martha Forsyth is an American folklorist, researcher of Bulgarian folklore. [1]

Biography
She was born in 1940 in Dayton, Ohio, USA. Lives in Newton, Massachusetts. In 1962 she graduated from Radcliffe Women's College at Harvard University, and in 1964 received a master's degree in Slavic languages ​​and literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. She then taught Russian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before studying Bulgarian folklore. She has visited Bulgaria more than sixteen times, several times as a scholarship holder of the IREX Foundation (1980-1981), Fulbright (1988) and other organizations, collects and records traditional folk songs in various localities. Transcribes and translates lyrics of Bulgarian folk songs, gives lectures, works with groups for Bulgarian folk music and promotes Bulgarian folklore among a wide audience. She is one of the founders of the Boston Ensemble for Bulgarian Folk Songs "Zdravets". [1]

Collects an extremely rich archive of recordings and two hundred 90-minute cassettes with more than 4,000 authentic folk songs from Southwestern Bulgaria, recorded by her in the period 1978 - 1983. She donated this archive to the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress Washington, USA. [1]

She is a master of the traditional ornament made of beads, which he studies in Sarnitsa, in the Western Rhodopes. She is a co-founder of the Beads Without End initiative with exquisite jewelry designs. She is a master of belts in traditional Bulgarian style. Participates in ensembles for Bulgarian folk dances. [1]

From 1982 to 2014 she was secretary / treasurer of the International Association for Bulgarian Studies in North America. She was awarded the Diploma of Merit for Bulgarian Studies by the Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2010 for her contribution to the study of Bulgarian folklore and significant merits to Bulgarian studies as Secretary of the Association for Bulgarian Studies in the United States. [1]