The teacher, writer, translator, journalist and publisher Ana Karima (1871-1949) was born in Russia, in family of Bulgarian father and Ukrainian mother. She graduated high school in Sofia, as a student of Ekaterina Karavelova. She had been working as a teacher until her marriage to the famous politician and social democrat Yanko Sakazov and the birth of her three children. Karima was one of the few female intellectuals of her generation who divorce and did not repeat her marriage. She herself supported her children with writing and selling plays and prose, translations from Russian and French, editing, publishing books and newspapers.
Karima was one of the emblems of the Bulgarian women’s movement – founder of the “Saznanie” Women’s Educational Society (1897), co-founder and first chairman of the Bulgarian Women’s Union (1901-1906), founder of the Equality Union (1908-1921), editor-in-chief the “Women’s Voice” newspaper (1899) and “Balgarka” newspaper (1917).
Karima was the owner of a Commercial girls’ school in Sofia. She founded a boarding school for orphans and an invalid society for children with mental health problems.
She is among the few productive Bulgarian female writers – a member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers (1914-1949), an author of over 50 books, plays, stories and publicistic texts.