Friday, October 28th, 2022

Photonics Auditorium (PHO 206), 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA
5:30 to 7:30pm. Reception to follow.

Join us for an afternoon discussion of the life and works of two prominent Greek authors, Amanda Michalopoulou and Kallia Papadaki, and a celebration of the importance of women writers to contemporary cultural life in Greece. The authors will read from their works, and Prof. Vilelmini Sosoni (Ionian University of Greece) will moderate a discussion and Q & A. All attendees will have a chance to meet the authors and experts at a reception afterwards. This event is free and open to students, scholars, and the general public.

From the times of Sappho of Lesbos to nowadays, the works of Greek female writers have offered us an essential critical lens through which we can see and reflect on our personal and social existences. Dealing with serious matters and phenomena of contemporary life such as gender equality, racial discrimination, the migrant crisis, the rise of neo-fascism, social segregation, and increasing intolerance and polarization in modern societies, contemporary Greek female novelists induct us into a world where reality and fiction intertwine. Given that these inspiring women live, write, and think within a particular socio-cultural framework – the one of Greece – they offer a critical observation and interpretation of a nation’s mindset, and how it adapts to global challenges and changes. In this context, their translations add new colors to the horizon of our understanding.

Featured Speakers

Amanda Michalopoulou

An internationally acclaimed author of eight novels and three short story collections, Michalopoulou’s writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Guernica, World Literature Today, Words Without Borders, The Guardian, and many more prestigious publications. Her stories, which have been translated into twenty languages, have lead to her reception of numerous awards, including the Revmata Award (1994), the Diavazo Award (1996), the Academy of Athens Prize (2013) and the International Literature Prize by NEA in the US (2008). She lives in Athens, Greece, where she teaches creative writing.

Kallia Papadaki

A screenwriter, poet, and author, her short story collection The Back-Lot Sound (Polis Publishers, 2009), won the New Writers Award from the Greek literary journal Diavazo. In 2011, she was selected to participate in the Scritture Giovani with her short story Agis and Mary, at the Mantova, Hay, and Berlin literary festivals. Her second book, Lavender in December (2011), was a poetry collection. Her third book, Dendrites (2015), is a novel that has been translated into several languages, received the Centre National du Livre (CNL), development grant in 2012, won the Young Author’s Award from the literary journal Clepsidra in 2016, and received the European Union Prize for Literature in 2017.

Vilelmini Sosoni

Vilelmini Sosoni is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the Ionian University in Greece. She has taught Specialized Translation in the United Kingdom and in Greece, and has extensive professional experience having worked as a professional translator, editor, and subtitler. She studied English Language and Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and holds an MA in Translation and a PhD in Translation and Text Linguistics from the University of Surrey. She is, among others, a founding member of the Laboratory “Language and Politics” of the Ionian University and the Greek Chapter of Women in Localization. She participated in several EU-funded projects, edited several volumes and books on translation, and published numerous articles in international journals and collective volumes.

This event is sponsored by the Boston University Center for the Humanities, the Department of Classical Studies, the European Studies program, the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the Department of World Languages and Literature’s MFA in Literary Translation Program, and the Boston University Philhellenes.

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