Poetry

Anna Griva studied Philology in Athens and Italian Literature in Rome and holds a PhD in Italian Renaissance Literature. She is the author of multiple poetry collections, prose works, studies, and translations. Her poetry collection The Lost Goddess (Melani, 2023) received the Greek State Prize for Poetry, while her earlier collection Demons (Melani, 2020) was honored with an award from the Academy of Athens. She has also published the short story collection The Animal Gods (Kichli, 2021) and the historical novels Exiled Queens (Melani, 2021), The Greek Slave (Melani, 2022) and The Alchemist (Melani, 2026 – First Prize for Fiction awarded by the Club for Unesco Art, Literature and Science of Greece), as well as scholarly and essayistic works on Sappho, Plato, Renaissance literature, and Byzantine tradition. Her work has been translated into several languages.

Demetra Chistodoulou was born in Athens. She studied Law and Philology. She has published 17 books of poetry, one of prose, an anthology of translated ancient Greek lyric poetry and a volume of translations from ancient Greek drama. She has been awarded the State Poetry Prize in 2008, the prize of the literary magazine ANAGNOSTIS in 2015 , the prize “Zean Moreas” of the Poetry Bureau in 2018 and the "Makis Lachanas" Poetry Award of the 2024 Panthessakian Poetry Festival. Her poetry has been translated into various languages.

Dimitra Kotoula (1974) is the author of four poetry collections. Her poems, essays, and translations—primarily of works by contemporary American poets such as Louise Glück (Nobel Prize 2020), Jorie Graham, and Sharon Olds—have been widely published in leading European and American literary journals. She has received the Chartis Poetry Award (2021) and the Hellenic State Prize for Poetry (2025). Selected poems by Kotoula have been translated into thirteen languages. In 2023, an anthology of her poetry, translated by Maria Nazos with a foreword by A.S. (Alicia) Stallings, was published in the U.S. The volume was reviewed in the TLS, shortlisted for the Runciman Award, and features in the recommendations of the Poetry Society of America. Poems from her current work on Homer have been selected to open the 80th anniversary celebration of the Penguin Classics series. She lives with her daughter in Athens and works as an archaeologist/art-historian.

George Veis was born in Athens in 1955. Ambassador ad. h. He studied Law at the University of Athens and International and Public Affairs at the Columbia University of New York. Since 1980, he has worked for the Diplomatic Service of the Foreign Ministry. He served, among others, as Ambassador in Sudan, Indonesia and Permanent Representative Ambassador at UNESCO. Selections from his work have appeared in translation in Romania, China, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, Slovenia, Japan, Indonesia and the USA. He has translated works of Jorge Luis Borges, Galway Kinnell, John Luther Long, André Barelly - Ado Kyrou, Li Bai and Raymond Chandler and regularly writes reviews and critical articles on poetry. His memoirs “Asia, Asia” won a National Book award (2000). His collection of poetry “Worlds’ details” won an Academy of Athens award (2008). The Department of Philology of the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 2024. Other distinctions: The Key of the City of Reading, Pennsylvania, USA, 1984, Andreas Kalvos Award (Queens College, City University of New York) 1989, Golden Medal of the Two Niles from the Government of the Sudan, 2008, State Literary Award for his book “From Tokyo to Khartoum”, 2010, Grant Commander of the Greek Order of the Phoenix, 2012, Poetry Award, Academy of Athens- Petros Charis Foundation, 2014, State Literary Award for his book "Everywhere", 2016.

Haris Vlavianos was born in Rome in 1957. He studied Economics and Philosophy at the University of Bristol and Politics, History, and International Relations at the University of Oxford (Trinity College). His doctoral thesis entitled, Greece 1941-1949: From Resistance to Civil War, was published by Macmillan (1992).

He has published fourteen collections of poetry. His latest collection, Renaissance has just appeared in the US with an Introduction by Margaret Atwood, and it’s being translated into, German and Italian. His collection, Self-Portrait of White (2018) was awarded the National Poetry Prize, the Academy of Athens Poetry Prize, and the Poetry Prize of the “Anagnostis” Literary Journal. He has also published numerous books of essays on poetry and culture. In addition, he has published an autobiographical novel, entitled, Blood into Water, which has appeared in Germany and Italy, as well as a History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku, which has appeared in England, France and Germany and recently in the US.

His semi-fictitious historical book, entitled, Hitler’s Secret Diary: Landsberg Prison November 1923-December 1924, was published in 2015 and is a study of Hitler’s personality through the recreation of a diary he kept in prison - now lost - after the failed “Beer-Hall Putsch”. The book was recently published in France and Holland and has received very positive reviews in many journals, such as the “Monde Diplomatique”. He has also written a dramatic monologue entitled, Now it’s my turn to speak, about his sister and her recent death from an overdose, after struggling for years with heroin addiction.

He has translated in book form the works of renowned poets such as: Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, John Ashbery, Anne Carson Zbigniew Herbert, Fernando Pessoa, Michael Longley, Adam Zagajewski, William Blake and Anthology of Love Poems. His translation of Eliot’s The Waste Land was published to great critical acclaim three years ago. He has so far translated six of Louise Glϋck’s collections: Virtuous and Faithful Night, Wild Iris, Winter Recipes from the Collective, Triumph of Achilles, Meadowlands and Averno. His two latest books are a study of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, accompanied by a translation of 160 of her most important and memorable poems, and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red.

For thirty-two years he was the editor of “Poetry” and “Poetics”, two award-winning and renowned literary journals and Poetry Editor at “Patakis Publications”.

Many of his books have been translated and published in England, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Spain, Bulgaria, Rumania, and his poems have appeared in numerous European and American journals and anthologies.

He is Professor of History of Ideas and Modern Greek Poetry at the American College of Greece and Chief Consultant and Head of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Hellenic Culture and the Liberal Arts.

For his contribution in promoting Italian literature and culture in Greece, the President of the Italian Republic bestowed upon him in February 2005 the title of “Cavaliere”, while the Dante Society of Italy awarded him the “Dante Prize” for his publications on the Divine Comedy.

Lena Kallergi is the author of the poetry books Animero (Untamed, Ikaros, 2023), which received the Anagnostis Magazine Poetry Award; One Ship to Spare (Gavriilidis, 2016; Monocle, 2023), which received the Poets’ Circle Award; and Gardens in the Sand (Gavriilidis, 2010), which received the Maria Polydouri Award. She participated in the experimental poetry volumes Poetry Team (Gavriilidis, 2010) and Poetry Team II: In Favour of Dreaming (Gavriilidis, 2012). Her poems, translations, and essays have been published in literary journals and anthologies in Greece and abroad.

Maria Koulouri (Athens, Greece) was born in 1975.

Melani Publications has published her poetry books:

Bare Museum, 2013 (The First Appearing Poet - Hellenic Writers Company Award).

Clocks and other beats, 2015 (Τhe Athens Academy of Letters and Fine Arts-Lyric Poetry

Lits quotidiens, is an anthology of her poems translated in French by Michel Volkovitch and

Myrto Gondicas and it was published in France in 2018 by Le miel des anges Publications.

Some of her poems have been translated into several languages.

Her hybrid text with title Food has been presented in the 2019 Athens- Epidaurus Festival.

She is also the screenwriter of the short film Possibly Strangers.

She has taken part in several international poetry festivals.

Maria Patakia is a lawyer and poet. She was president and is now secretary of the Greek cultural association in Brussels, KYKLOS, which aims to promote contemporary cultural life in Belgium. She is also a member of the French cultural association Art faber and its representative in Greece. She worked as a legal advisor at the European Commission and has published five poetry collections with the publishing house Melani, the most recent being *Amor*, Melani. A compilation of her poems is translated into French and published by the French publishing house Miel des Anges.

She has also translated poetry (by French poets as well as female poets from Iran) and essays on poetry from French into Greek.

She was born in Thessaloniki in 1964 and studied law in Athens and Frankfurt as a scholar of the Daimler-Benz Foundation. She is a poet and translator of poetry, prose, scholarly works, and essays from German into Greek. Among others, she has translated Rilke and Habermas. In July 2026, her translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus was published by Patakis. Her poetry and translations have been published by Nefeli Publications, Patakis Publications, the University of Crete Press, and other publishers in Greece, and by Converso and Romiosini in Germany. She also compiled the anthology of contemporary Greek poetry Poetry with Persistence (Antipodes, 2020). Her poems have been translated into English, German, Slovenian, Finnish, Italian, French, Polish, and other languages, and published in international anthologies. She writes reviews of poetry and children’s and young adult literature for the newspaper Kathimerini and has served on the editorial board of the journal Poiitiki. She lives in Athens, works at the National Centre for Social Research, and has two daughters.

Myrsini Gana was born in Athens, Greece, in 1975. She studied English literature in Athens and cultural management in Brussels, Belgium. She works as a literary translator since 2003 and has translated into Greek works by Davis Sedaris, Sylvia Plath, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kate Atkinson, Truman Capote, and others. In 2019 she received the Translated Literature Award by Public bookstores and the British Council for her translation of Alice Oswalds’ long poem “Memorial”, which she performed live on several occasions with great success. Her first collection of poems “Ta pera meri” was published in 2017 and received the Public bookstores’ Readers Award and the Poetry Prize for First Book by the literary magazine Anagnostis. Her second collection of poetry “I have other things I love” was published in 2020 and was short-listed for the National Book Award for Poetry.

Nikos Erinakis [b. 1988, Athens] is an Asst. Professor of Political & Social Philosophy and Philosophy of Culture at the University of Crete and Adj. Professor at the University of Athens and the Hellenic Open University. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy [University of London & University of Oxford], having studied Economics [AUEB], Philosophy & Literature [Warwick] and Philosophy of the Social Sciences [LSE]. He is the Director of Research at the think-tank ENA, while he is a board member of the Hellenic Authors’ Society and the Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra, and has been a board member of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival and the Corfu International Festival. He has been honoured by the Academy of Athens with the Award for Excellent Philosophical Treatise for his philosophy book "Authenticity and Autonomy: From Creativity to Freedom" (Keimena, 2020). He has also published three poetry books, two anthologies of poems by major modern European poets, and four edited collections of philosophy essays. He currently teaches and publishes extensively on Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy of Digitality, while his new philosophy book "Hyperdialectics of Eutopia: Humanness, Artificiality, Freedom" recently got published. His papers, articles and poems have been widely acclaimed, translated and published in international peer-reviewed journals, edited collections, anthologies and the popular press.

THANASSIS HATZOPOULOS (Aliveri, Evia, Greece, 1961) is a poet and translator, he is also a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He has published seventeen books of poetry from 1986, an outline and an essay of a poetics, a book of essays, three tales for children, a book of short stories and two novels. His poetry collection Cell was awarded the Prix Max Jacob étranger 2013 in France and his work Verbs for the rose was awarded the National Translation Prize for 2003 in Spain. In 2013, he was awarded the Poetry Prize by the Athens Academy for his entire work. In 2014 he was deemed a Knight by the French Democracy in the category of Letters and Arts. He was deemed also with the National Short-Story Prize for his book Historical Present in 2021 and the Poetry Prize of O Anagnostis and the National Poetry Prize for his book Flags under construction. The French Republic conferred on him the title of Knight of Arts and Letters in 2014, and the French Department of the University of Athens awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 2025.

Yannis Efstathiadis was born in Athens in 1946.

He has published collections of poetry and song lyrics, as well as poems for children.

He has also authored numerous books of short prose and short stories, along with essays, musical texts, articles, and chronicles. Under the nickname Apikios, he wrote extensively on gastronomy.

His book People Made of Words (Anthropoi apo Lexeis), he was awarded the State Short Story Award in 2012. That same year, he was honored with the Ouranis Foundation Award of the Academy of Athens for his literary and musical essays.

In parallel, he has worked as a music producer for the Third Programme of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT).