ECTS Code: G-LSUD4 AmLit444E
Creative Writing Workshop
This workshop offers the opportunity to 3rd or 4th year students who have
a genuine interest in creative writing, who may or may not have already written
creative work of their own, and who would like guided practice in improving
their writing skills. The course offers other insights into the literary text,
different to the theoretical and analytical approaches of other courses, based
as it is on a close reading and emulation of various literary genres and styles.
Students will examine representative works of poetry, prose and drama as a basis
for producing their own work.
The workshop is open to a small group of
students who will be assessed on the basis of their written work (primarily in
English) they produce during the course of the lessons as well as on their
attendance and participation. Given the nature of the course, it should be
understood that attendance is essential.
Students will also be expected to attend all
guest writers/performers presentations, readings and/or seminars. Since the
beginning of 2009,
all these activities have been part of the Problematics Seminar Series. Between 2006-2008
the seminar accompanying the Creative Writing Workshop was entitled Writers
and their Work ( for more information see relevant section below).
Students who have attended the
course in the past have had work published in leading literary
magazines, such as Εντευκτήριο and Mετάφραση. For more
information regarding the public reading of students' work please
press here.
The skills learnt in this course also open up a range of other
professional avenues in related fields, such as advertising, script
writing, editing and the publishing world in general.
Guest writer: Natalie Bakopoulos (Friday 8 May, 18:00-20:00, Venue: School
of English Library, 308)
Natalie
Bakopoulos's first novel, The Green Shore, was published in
2012 by Simon & Schuster (and the Greek translation by Patakis). Her
work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, Tin House, Salon,
Kathimerini, Five Chapters, The Millions, and other publications, as
well as in the 2010 O. Henry Award anthology. She regularly writes
book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and is a contributing
editor for the online journal Fiction Writers Review. She is
currently a Fulbright Scholar in Athens, working on her second
novel.
2013
Guest writer interviews:
You'll find below the bios of the writers that participated in the
international Book Fair that took place in Thessaloniki, Greece,
between May 16th-19th, 2013, as well as the interviews that were
conducted by the School of English students. All student activities
were organized in collaboration with the British Council with the
United Kingdom being the guest county of honor for 2013.
Series 8
MICHAEL ARDITTI is the author of seven
highly praised novels, The Celibate, Pagan and her Parents,
Easter, Unity, A Sea Change, The Enemy of the Good and Jubilate.
His latest novel, The Breath of Night, will be published in
July. He has written plays for the stage and radio and a collection
of short stories, Good Clean Fun. He has been shortlisted for
several major awards, with Easter winning the first Waterstone’s
Mardi Gras award in 2000. He was a Harold Hyam Wingate scholar in
2000, a Royal Literary Fund fellow in 2001, the Leverhulme Artist in
Residence at the Freud museum in 2008 and, in March 2013, was
awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Chester.
JONATHAN COEwas born in Birmingham in
1961.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and completed a Ph.D.
on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones at Warwick University. He
taught English Poetry at Warwick, subsequently working as a
professional musician, writing music for jazz and cabaret. He also
worked as a legal proofreader before becoming a freelance writer and
journalist.
He is the author of several novels including The Dwarves of Death
(1990), a cult murder story filmed as Five Seconds to Spare
in 1999; the acclaimed What a Carve Up! (1994), a caustic
satire of British life in the 1980s and winner of the Mail on
Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the French Prix du Meilleur
Livre Étranger (France); and The House of Sleep (1997), which
won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fiction) and the Prix Médicis
Etranger (France) and recounts the adventures of a group of former
university students, reunited at the mysterious cliff-top house
where they used to live. The Rotters' Club (2001), is set in
Birmingham during the 1970s and tells the story of a group of school
friends working on the school magazine. It was adapted for BBC
Television in 2005. A sequel, The Closed Circle, was
published in 2004.
Jonathan Coe is also the author of two biographies of film actors,
Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart. His biography of the novelist B.
S. Johnson was published in 2004 and won the Samuel Johnson Prize. A
collection of short fiction and non-fiction, 9th and 13th,
was published in 2005.
Jonathan Coe lives in London. His latest book is The Terrible
Privacy of Maxwell Sim (2010).
ANDREW CRUMEY has a PhD in theoretical
physics and is former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. He is
senior lecturer in creative writing at Northumbria University and
has been a visiting fellow at Durham Institute of Advanced Study.
His seventh novel The Secret Knowledge will be published by
Dedalus (UK) in July 2013. He won the £60,000 Northern Rock
Foundation Writers Award for his previous novel Sputnik Caledonia.
It was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and
Scottish Book of the Year, and longlisted for the Arthur C Clarke
Award. His 1994 debut novel Music, in a Foreign Language won the
Saltire First Book Award and was longlisted for the Guardian Fiction
Prize. Mr Mee was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won a
Scottish Arts Council book award. Mobius Dick was a finalist
for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. All his novels are available in
Greek translation.
RACHEL CUSK is a memoirist and novelist.
She was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in
Los Angeles. She read English at New College, Oxford. Her first
novel, Saving Agnes (1993), won the Whitbread First Novel
Award. A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001), is a
critically acclaimed personal exploration of motherhood. In The
Lucky Ones (2003), she uses a series of five narratives, loosely
linked by the experience of parenthood, to write of life's
transformations; of what separates us from those we love and what
binds us to those we no longer understand.
In 2003 Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one
of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. Her novel, Arlington
Park (2006), was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for
Fiction. Her latest books are the memoir of a 3-month family stay in
Italy, The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy (2009); The
Bradshaw Variations (2009), a novel; and the controversial
memoir Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012).
DAVID HARSENT has published ten
collections of poetry. The most recent, Night — published in January
2011 — was Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2011 and won the
Griffin International Poetry Prize, as well as being shortlisted for
the Forward Prize (Best Collection), the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the
Costa Poetry Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa
University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
His work in music theatre has involved collaborations with a number
of composers, but most often with Harrison Birtwistle, and has been
performed at the Royal Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Proms and on
Channel 4 TV.
VICTORIA HISLOP was born in the UK. She
read English Literature at Oxford University and afterwards worked
in book publishing, public relations and journalism. In 2001, she
began to write fiction.
Her three novels, The Island, The Return and The Thread have all
been international bestsellers and she has sold more than three
million books worldwide. Her work is translated into more than
thirty languages. Her latest work (a book of short stories which are
all set in Greece) is entitled The Last Dance. Her first novel, The
Island, became a successful television serial in Greece (To Nisi)
which has also been shown throughout the Balkans.
She has been visiting Greece continually since 1976 and now has a
house in Crete.
SUZANNE JOINSON is a writer. Her novel 'A
Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar' was published by Bloomsbury in
2012. It was reviewed in the New York Times, was an LA Times
Bestseller, a Guardian/Observer Book of the Year 2012 and translated
into 12 languages.
She is also a travel and non-fiction writer, having written for
Vogue, Lonely Planet and lots of other places. In 2011 she was
writer in residence at the 1930s Art Deco Shoreham Airport in
Sussex. Her short story LAILA AHMED won a New Writing Ventures prize
in 2008.
For the past ten years she worked part-time in the literature
department of the British Council travelling regularly in the Middle
East, China, Russia and Western and Eastern Europe. She has worked
in and explored Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Greece and many other
countries.
She is currently working on her second novel which is set in the
British Mandate era Palestine.
DAVID NICHOLLS was born in 1966 in
Eastleigh, Hampshire. David attended Toynbee Comprehensive school,
and attended Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, before going to the
University of Bristol in 1985 to study English Literature and Drama.
Having graduated, and keen to pursue a career as an actor, he won a
scholarship to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in
New York, before returning to London in 1991 He worked sporadically
as an actor for the next eight years, appearing in plays at
Battersea Arts Centre, the Finborough, West Yorkshire Playhouse and
Birmingham Rep.
During this period, he began to write, developing an adaptation of
Sam Shepard’s stage-play Simpatico with the director Matthew Warchus,
an old friend from University. He also wrote his first original
script, a situation comedy about frustrated waiters, Waiting, which
was later optioned by the BBC.
Simpatico was turned into a feature film in 1999, starring Sharon
Stone, Catherine Keener, Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte and Albert Finney.
This allowed David to start writing full-time, and his first TV
production followed soon afterwards; I Saw You, a one-off
romantic-comedy starring Paul Rhys and Fay Ripley, which won best
single play at the annual BANFF television festival. Four episodes
of Cold Feet followed, and since then David has written for film and
TV as well as fiction. He has been twice nominated for BAFTA awards
and his first novel, Starter for 10 was featured on the first
Richard and Judy Book Club. David's TV credits include an updated
version of Much Ado About Nothing, with Damian Lewis and Sarah
Parrish (BAFTA nominated - Best Single Play) and the one-off play
After Sun, starring Peter Capaldi and Sarah Parrish. An acclaimed
adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles followed, starring Gemma
Arterton, Eddie Redmayne, Hans Matheson and Jodie Whittaker.
In fiction, he has written three novels, Starter for Ten, The
Understudy and One Day. In film, Simpatico was followed by the movie
version of Starter for Ten, directed by Tom Vaughan, with James
MacAvoy and Rebecca Hall, and an adaptation of Blake Morrison's
memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? directed by Anand
Tucker, and starring Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent and Julie Stevenson.
The feature film version of One Day, directed by Lone Scherfig,
began production in July 2010, with Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess,
Romola Garai, Rafe Spall, Jodie Whittaker, Ken Stott and Patricia
Clarkson.
At present, David is writing his fourth novel, having just finalised
his work on a feature-film version of Dickens' Great Expectations.
David lives in North London with his partner Hannah and two
children.
CELIA REES has written over twenty books
for teenagers, and has become a leading writer for Young Adults with
an international reputation. Her books have been translated into 28
languages and she has been short listed for the Guardian, Whitbread
and W.H. Smith Children’s Book Awards. Her books Witch Child,
Sorceress and Pirates! have won awards in the UK, USA, France
and Italy. Her latest book, This is Not Forgiveness, a dark,
contemporary thriller, has been nominated for several UK national
awards and was one of Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Books of 2012 in the
U.S.
Celia lives in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and divides her time
between writing, talking to readers in schools and libraries,
reviewing and teaching creative writing.
2012
Series 7
Guest writer: Tino Villanueva (Tuesday 20 November, 12:00-14:00, Venue:
Room 112 * Old Philosophy Building)
Tino
Villanueva is the author of six books of poetry, among them Shaking
Off the Dark (1984); Crónica de mis años peores (1987) /
Chronicle of My Worst Years (1994); Scene from the Movie
GIANT (1993), which won a 1994 American Book Award; and
Primera causa / First Cause (1999), a chapbook on memory and
writing. Villanueva is fully bilingual and has been anthologized in
An Ear to the Ground: An Anthology of Contemporary American
Poetry (University of Georgia Press, 1989), and Poetas sin
fronteras (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2000). He has taught
creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin, The College
of William & Mary, and most recently at Bowdoin College. His art
work has appeared on the covers and pages of national and
international journals, such as Nexos, Green Mountains
Review, TriQuarterly, and Parnassus. Six of his
poems have been anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Latino
Literature (2011). He teaches in the Department of Romance
Studies at Boston University.
Guest writer: Adam Baron (Thursday 1 November,
19:30-21:30, Venue: British Council, Thessaloniki)
Adam
Baron was born in the 1970s and leaves in London. He is an actor and
writer. He has worked as an editor and script writer for TV and
radio. He now teaches creative writing at Kingston University
(London). His work has been published in various online writing
magazines. He has also published the following crime fiction novels
- Shut Eye (2000), Hold Back the Night (2001) and It was You (2004)
- all of them featuring the detective Billy Rucker. In 2006 he
published Kingdom of Bones. His novel Super Jack has also been
published in Greek by Indiktos Publications.
Guest writer: Fiona Sampson (Wednesday 31 October, 15:00-17:00, Venue:
British Council, Thessaloniki, to be repeated on Thursday 1 November,
14:00-16:00, Venue: British Council, Thessaloniki)
Fiona
Sampson studied at the Universities of Oxford, where she won the
Newdigate Prize, and Nijmegen, where she received a PhD in the
philosophy of language. Her seventeen books include Rough Music,
short-listed for the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes 2010, and A
Century of Poetry Review (PBS Special Commendation, 2009). She has
eleven books in translation including Patuvachki Dnevnik, awarded
the Zlaten Prsten (Macedonia, 2004). In 2009, she received a
Cholmondeley Award and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for
Literature. She has received Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils
of England and of Wales, and the Society of Authors, as well as the
US Literary Review’s Charles Angoff Award and a Hawthornden
Fellowship; and has been shortlisted for the Forward single-poem
prize and twice for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Fiona Sampson is the
Editor of Poetry Review, the UK’s oldest and most influential poetry
journal, and contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Irish Times,
The Independent and the TLS. A past judge of the Irish Times IMPAC
and Independent Foreign Fiction Prizes, this year she is a judge for
the Forward Prizes and Eric Gregory Awards. Music Lessons: the
Newcastle Poetry Lectures and Percy Bysshe Shelley (in the Faber
Poet-to-poet series) are both published in May. Forthcoming from
Chatto are Beyond the Lyric, (autumn 2012) a critical survey of
contemporary British poetry, and her next collection, Coleshill (Jan
2013).
Christos
Chryssopoulos (novelist, essayist, translator) has authored five
novels, most recently "The London Day of Laura Jackson," (Academy of
Athens Award, 2008), two volumes of essays ("The Language Box" in
2006 and "The Double Dream of Writing" co-authored with Haris
Vlavianos in 2009), one collection of short stories ("Napolean
Delastos' Recipes," 1997), one novella ("The Parthenon Bomber,"
1996-2010), the photo book "Encounters" (2003) as well as the artist
book "The Black Dress" (2002) in collaboration with the American
artist Diane Neumaier. He is featured in many anthologies and his
work is available in five languages. He writes regularly for the
Athenian press and he holds a column in the journal "Nea Hestia"/"Nea
Estia".In 2008 he founded the Dasein International Literature
Festival in Athens (http://www.daseinfest.blogspot.com)
and has been directing it ever since.Christos Chrissopouloshas been
awarded grants in Europe and the US, and he was an Iowa Writing
Fellow in 2007, where he lectured in Creative Writing.His website is
http://www.chrissopoulos.blogspot.com.
Guest writer: Gina Loring (Wednesday 23 March 19:15-21.00, Venue: School
Library, 308)
Gina
Loring’s music is reminiscent of classics like Nina Simone and
Billie Holiday, with the innovation and talent of a Lauryn Hill or a
Jill Scott. She is one of very few artists who seamlessly balance
music and poetry. However, both of Gina Loring’s talents are equally
strong enough to stand on their own. Among her other accolades, Gina
Loring was recently honored to win Queen Latifah’s CoverGirl Persona
Contest for female hip hop artists. The top ranking female poet at
the 2002 National Poetry Slam, she was featured on two seasons of
HBO’s Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry and BET’s Lyric Cafe. As a
writer/performer on legendary TV and film producer Norman Lear’s
nationwide “Declare Yourself” tour, she helped register thousands of
voters. She is featured on De La Soul’s album “Are You In?,” the
Brand New Heavies album “We Won’t Stop,” and has been mentored by
such artists as Suzan-Lori Parks, Saul Williams, Mos Def, Pharoahe
Monch, and Marla Gibbs. (http://www.ginaloring.com)
Guest writer: Tryfon Tolides (Wednesday 16 February 19:15-21.00, Venue:
School Library, 308)
Tryfon Tolides
was born in Korifi Voiou, Greece. He completed a BFA in Creative
Writing at the University of Maine, and an MFA at Syracuse
University. He has received a Reynolds Scholarship, the 2004 Foley
Poetry Prize. His manuscript, An Almost Pure Empty Walking, a 2005
National Poetry Series selection, was published by Penguin in 2006.
His work has appeared in America, Atlanta Review, Mondo Greco,
Poetry Daily, Worcester Review, and elsewhere. He lives in
Farmington, Connecticut.
Maggie Gee was
born in Poole, Dorset, and educated at state schools and Somerville
College, Oxford. After working in publishing as an editor, she took
a research job at Wolverhampton Polytechnic where she completed a
PhD. Her first published novel was Dying, in Other Words (1981), an
experimental black comedy in which a supposedly dead woman
triumphantly rewrites the story of her own death. In 1982 Maggie Gee
was selected as one of the original 20 'Best of Young British
Novelists'. She is a Fellow and Vice-President of the Royal Society
of Literature. She has been a member of the Society of Authors'
Committee of Management and the government Public Lending Right
committee, and was from 2004-2008 the first female Chair of Council
of the Royal Society of Literature. She is Visiting Professor of
Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and lives in London
with her husband, the writer and broadcaster, Nicholas Rankin.
Guest writer: Tom Chivers
(Tuesday 11 May 15.00-17.00, Venue: Room 102A)
Tom Chivers is a
writer, editor and live literature producer. Born 1983 in South
London and educated at Oxford University, he currently lives in the
East End. In Spring 2008 he was the first ever Poet in Residence at
The Bishopsgate Institute. He published his first collection How
To Build A City (Salt Publishing) and a limited edition pamphlet
The Terrors (Nine Arches Press) last year. He also edited the
anthologies Generation Txt and City State: New London
Poetry (Penned in the Margins, 2006 & 2009). In September 2009
Radio 4 broadcast his documentary about the poet Barry MacSweeney.
He is Director of the live literature producer and small press
Penned in the Margins, and co-Director of London Word Festival. Tom
has performed his work across London and at festivals in Berlin,
Newcastle and Dublin.
Guest writers: Catherine Rogers (Fulbright
Artist-in-Residence) - Spring 2009
Catherine
Rogers lives and works in New York City as a playwright and actor.
Her most recent piece, THE SUDDEN DEATH OF EVERYONE, premiered in
2005 and has been seen at Dixon Place and Emerging Artists Theatre
in New York, the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, and the
Shubin Theatre in Philadelphia. As an actor she performed with
Faction of Fools, New York, with Sharon Fogarty in several premieres
at Manhattan Theatre Source, in workshops with Pantheatre Paris, and
in Robert Wilson’s Four Saints in Three Acts. Her full-length
play Einstein’s Daughter was seen at the Public Domain
Theatre, Texas, and at Cleveland Public Theater. Her short plays
Cowpoker: About Love, Historia Calamitatum: The Story of His
Misfortunes, and La Notte di San Lorenzo were presented
in such venues as Salvage Vanguard Texas, Nat Horne NYC, the Women
Playwrights Festival in Galway, Ireland, and in colleges and
universities throughout the U.S. Another solo piece Georgia
O’Keeffe x Catherine Rogers is published in Voices Made
Flesh: Performing Women’s Autobiography (U of Wisconsin Press).
Catherine has taught writing as a guest artist and as assistant
professor of humanities at NYU. Co-author of the creative writing
curriculum for Theatre for a New Audience, New York, she was an
artist-in-the-schools for several years and is an advocate of
creative writing as a tool for learning across the curriculum. She
is the editor of Mary Cassatt: A New Catalogue Raisonne soon
to be published online by Adelson Galleries, New York. She is a
member of the Dramatists Guild. Catherine received her BA in English
and Theatre from the College of St. Rose, Albany, New York, and her
MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas, Austin, where she
was a James A. Michener Fellow at the Texas Center for Writers. She
studied Greek for one semester at Columbia University and continues
intensive study at the School of Modern Greek, Aristotle University,
Thessaloniki.
As part of the Course in Creative
Writing offered by the Department of Translation and Intercultural
Studies in the School of English, AUTΗ, a series of talks by
visiting authors has been organised for the Winter Semester 2007.
Authors will talk about their work and, above all, offer insights
into the writing process. The series of talks is intended for
students registered on the Creative Writing Course, for students who
would like to find out more about the course and for anyone with a
genuine interest in Creative Writing.
Yiorgos Xenarios
(Tuesday 11 December 7.15 pm, Venue: Room 308 - Library) Yiorgos
Xenarios was born in Athens and studied Law at the University of
Athens. He has taught literary translation at the European
Centre for Literary Translation (EKEMEL) and literature courses
at Athens College. At present, he teaches courses in creative
writing for Metaichmio Publications. He has published three
novels: The Fall of Constantine (Kastaniotis 1990),
The Twins (Kastaniotis 1994) and Carving the Light (Kastaniotis
2001), which was shortlisted for the Diavazo Literary Prize. He
has also published numerous translations of both poetry and
prose. His translation of The Temptation of Saint Anthony
was shortlisted for the 2006 EKEMEL Translation Prize. In
addition, he regularly writes book reviews and articles for
national newspapers and literary magazines. In March 2007, he
was elected General Secretary of the Hellenic Writers’
Association.
Victoria Hislop
(Thursday 29 November 2007) After leaving
St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she read English, she worked
in book publishing and then in public relations. When she became
a mother in 1990, it was the catalyst for a change of career and
she began working as a freelance journalist specialising in
features on painting and education. When one of the magazines
she was writing for asked her to do a piece on Australia, she
branched into travel journalism and has since been to every
continent. The Greek setting for Victoria Hislop’s first novel
The Island (2005) reflects her love for a country that she has
visited over 25 times in the past two decades. For this novel
she won the “Best Newcomer” at 2007 British Book Awards. She is
now working on her second novel (The Return, May 2008) set in
20th century Spain.
Yannis Kesaridis (Tuesday
23 October) Yannis
Kesaridis was born in Veria in 1959. He studied Political and
Economic Sciences, Theatre and Greek Literature. He has worked –
as an actor, director and playwright – for the State Theatre of
Northern Greece, the Municipal-Regional Theatre of Veria, the
“Techne” Experimental Theatre, the Municipal-Regional Theatre of
Serres, State TV and private radio. In October 2003 he was
appointed Head of Cultural Affairs and Student Artistic “Events”
in the Department of Secondary Education of the Prefecture of
Imathia. He is also a member of the working group for the
National Book Centre’s “Reading Clubs” Programme. He first
appeared in Greek Letters in March 1996 with the short story
“Dirty Garment”. Since then, he has published three collections
of short stories: Chronicle of a Premiere (Exandas 1997),
Encounters and Guilt (Kedros 2000. Shortlisted for the
State Literature Prize and the Diavazo Literature Prize) and
Misandra (Kedros 2005. Winner of the State Literature
Prize). A number of his stories have been translated into
German, Georgian and English.
Series 3
As part of the Course in Creative
Writing offered by the Department of Translation and Intercultural
Studies in the School of English, AUTΗ, a series of talks by
visiting authors has been organised for the Spring Semester 2007.
Authors will talk about their work and, above all, offer insights
into the writing process. The series of talks is intended for
students registered on the Creative Writing Course, for students who
would like to find out more about the course and for anyone with a
genuine interest in Creative Writing.
Vasilis Papageorgiou
(Wednesday 16 May 2007, Room 308 - Library) Vasilis
Papageorgiou was born 1955 in Thessaloniki. Since 1975 he has
lived in Sweden. He has written plays that have been produced
and published both in Greece and Sweden, three collections of
poetry in Swedish and a novel in Greek. He has translated many
books of poetry into Greek and Swedish and has published many
scholarly texts in which the theory of the tragic plays a
central role. He teaches Comparative Literature and Creative
Writing at Växjö University, Sweden.
Ο Βασίλης Παπαγεωργίου γεννήθηκε στη Θεσσαλονίκη το 1955. Από το
1975 ζει στη Σουηδία. Έχει γράψει θεατρικά έργα που παίχτηκαν
και δημοσιεύτηκαν στην Ελλάδα και τη Σουηδία, τρεις συλλογές
ποιημάτων στα Σουηδικά και ένα μυθιστόρημα στα Ελληνικά. Έχει
μεταφράσει πολλές ποιητικές συλλογές στα Ελληνικά και Σουηδικά,
και έχει δημοσιεύσει πολλά φιλολογικά κείμενα, στα οποία η
θεωρία του τραγικού παίζει κεντρικό ρόλο. Διδάσκει συγκριτική
λογοτεχνία και δημιουργική γραφή στο πανεπιστήμιο Växjö (Βέκσιε).
Series 2
As part of the Course in Creative
Writing offered by the Department of Translation and Intercultural
Studies in the School of English, AUTΗ, a series of talks by
visiting authors has been organised for the Winter Semester 2006.
Authors will talk about their work and, above all, offer insights
into the writing process. The series of talks is intended for
students registered on the Creative Writing Course, for students who
would like to find out more about the course and for anyone with a
genuine interest in Creative Writing.
Takis Theodoropoulos
(Wednesday 22 November 2006) Takis
Theodoropoulos was born in Athens in 1954. For many years he
worked as a journalist and was the first editor-in-chief of the
cultural magazine "To Tetarto" published by the composer Manos
Hadjidakis. Since 1996 he has held senior positions in
publishing. He has written numerous works of fiction, including
The Whisper of Persephone (Agra 1985), Nights in Arcadia (Estia
1991), The Inconceivable Landscape (Estia 1991 - Oceanida 2000 -
Actes Sud, France - Prosveta, Yugoslavia), The Fall of Narcissus
(Estia 1994), Comme la part du ciel (ed. Voir 1996), Spell of
Dionysus (Oceanida 2000), Madness at Midday (Oceanida 2000 -
Editions Metropolis, Suisse), Feline Philosophers of Athens (Oceanida
2001 - Sabine Wespieser editeur 2003, France -Atlas publishers
2003, Holland), as well as the play Those Who Lost their Sleep (Kastaniotis
1997) and an essay on André Malraux, The Transformations of
Hidden Greece (French Institute of Athens 1997 - Oceanida 2001).
Several of his books either have been, or are in the process of
being, published abroad in other languages (English, French,
Italian, Serbian, Turkish, Bulgarian).
Jeffrey Moore (Monday
27 November 2006) The Memory Artists. A Reading and
Discussion on Amnesia, Hypermnesia and Synaesthesia Born
in Montreal, Jeffrey Moore was educated at the University of
Toronto, the Sorbonne (Paris) and the University of Ottawa. He
is currently a freelance translator and Lecturer in Translation
at the Université de Montréal. He works for museums, theatres,
dance companies and film festivals around the world, and has an
extensive list of published translations to his credit,
including Magritte, Century of Splendour and Lost
Paradise-Symbolist Europe.Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain, his
first novel written over several years in Canada, Scotland,
England, Hungary and Bali, was a finalist for the QSPELL
Literary Awards and winner of both the regional and
international Commonwealth Writers Prize 2000. His second novel,
The Memory Artists, was published in the fall of 2004 by
Weidenfeld & Nicolson in Britain and by Penguin in Canada. The
book has recently been translated and published in Greek as Οι
Καλλιτέχνες της Μνήμης (Empiria Publications 2006). He currently
divides his time between Montreal and Val Morin, Quebec.
Aliki Barnstone (Monday
11 December 2006) Aliki
Barnstone is a poet, translator, critic, and editor. Her books
of poems are Blue Earth (Iris, 2004), Wild With It (Sheep
Meadow, 2002), a National Books Critics Circle Notable Book,
Madly in Love (Carnegie-Mellon, 1997), Windows in Providence
(Curbstone, 1981), and The Real Tin Flower (which was introduced
by Anne Sexton and was published by Macmillanin 1968, when she
was twelve years old). She has been nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize twice. Her translation, The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy:
A New Translation was published by W.W. Norton in 2006. She
edited A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (Schocken,
1980; second edition, 1992), The Calvinist Roots of the Modern
Era (University Press of New England, 1997), The Shambhala
Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Poetry (Shambhala, 1999; 2003),
and she introduced and wrote the readers’ notes for H.D.’s
Trilogy (New Directions, 1998). Her poems and translations have
appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, The Georgia
Review, New Letters, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, The Southern
Review, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
She has recorded a collaborative C.D. with musician Frank Haney.
Her study of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, Changing Rapture: The
Development of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry, is forthcoming with
University Press of New England. Barnstone currently is
Professor of English in the Creative Writing International
Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Series 1
As part of the Course in Creative
Writing offered by the Department of Translation and Intercultural
Studies in the School of English, AUTΗ, a series of talks by Greek
authors who live and write in Thessaloniki has been organised for
the Spring Semester 2006. Authors will talk about their work and,
above all, offer insights into the writing process. The series of
talks are intended for students registered on the Creative Writing
Course, for students who would like to find out more about the
course and for anyone with a genuine interest in Creative Writing.
Sophia Nikolaidou
(Wednesday 12 April 2006) Η
Σοφία Νικολαΐδου γεννήθηκε στη Θεσσαλονίκη το 1968. Σπούδασε
κλασική φιλολογία στο Α.Π.Θ. και παιδαγωγική αξιοποίηση των
Τεχνολογιών της Πληροφορίας και της Επικοινωνίας. Έχει εκδώσει
τα λογοτεχνικά βιβλία: Ξανθιά πατημένη (διηγήματα, Κέδρος,
1997), Ο φόβος θα σε βρει και θα’ σαι μόνος (διηγήματα,
Κέδρος, 1999), Πλανήτης Πρέσπα (Κέδρος, 2002), Ο μωβ
μαέστρος (Κέδρος, 2006, υπό έκδοση). Επίσης, έχει εκδώσει τα
βιβλία: Διαδίκτυο και διδασκαλία (μελέτη, Κέδρος, 2001),
Nick Cave, Μπαλάντες για φόνους και άλλα τραγούδια
(επιλογή-μετάφραση, Κέδρος, 2005). Έχει γράψει τα σενάρια:
Εγώ πληρώνω τα μάτια π’ αγαπώ. (Τηλεταινία, σειρά «Παράφορη
πόλη», ΕΤ3, 2005), Παρέες (σε συνεργασία με τον σκηνοθέτη
Σωτήρη Γκορίτσα. Η ταινία θα γυριστεί την άνοιξη του 2006).
Διηγήματά της έχουν μεταφραστεί στα αγγλικά, γερμανικά, σουηδικά,
ισπανικά, γεωργιανά, ρουμανικά, σε ανθολογίες και περιοδικά. Από
το 2002 συνεργάζεται τακτικά με το ένθετο Βιβλιοδρόμιο της
εφημερίδας “Τα Νέα”, για θέματα που αφορούν την ξένη λογοτεχνία.
Η ιστοσελίδα της είναι
www.snikolaidou.gr.
Sakis Serefas
(Wednesday 10 May 2006)
Sakis Serefas (1960-) was born in Thessaloniki where he lives
and works. He studied Medieval and Modern Greek Literature at
the AUTh. He has published twenty-six books including six
collections of poetry and six prose works, studies of cities,
places and poets, translations and anthologies. He has also
written the script for the feature film Rouleman, which
was filmed by director Panos Karkanevatos in 2004. His poetry
and prose has been translated into English, French, German,
Italian and Swedish and published in magazines and anthologies.
Dimitris Mingas
(Wednesday 24 May 2006) Dimitris
Mingas (1951-) comes from Messinia. Since 1995, he has lived in
Thessaloniki and works as a secondary-school teacher. In 1995 he
published a collection of poetry entitled You Embrace Mankind
If You Touch The Sea (Entefktirion) and in 1999 a collection
of short stories entitled Of Those At Rest (Athens:
Polis), for which he was awarded the prize for best first-time
author by the literary journal Diavazo. In 2001, he
published a novel It Rarely Snows in the Islands (Polis)
and in 2003 a collection of short stories entitled Befitting
Salonica Alone… (Metaichmio). A number of his short stories
have been translated into English, French and Chinese. His
novel, It Rarely Snows in the Islands, has been
translated into Italian and was published in October 2004 by
Crocetti Editore under the title Sulle isole non nevica mai.
His most recent novel is entitled Not Playing for Real (Metaichmio
2005).