Digital publisher The Pigeonhole is proud to launch Letters from Greece, a series of ten essays focusing on different themes, from Athenian artists’ responses to the crisis to the quirks of rural life in northern Greece. The series makes an attempt to examine the way in which Greece is seen today. Gone are the hazy images of Doric pillars and sun-soaked olive groves. Since the debt crisis, the country has become a media plaything, the broken child on the naughty step. Yet so few reports manage to capture the essence of the country or the realities of daily life at this difficult juncture. Letters from Greece goes far beyond what’s served up in the press to offer an intimate, compelling insight into what it’s really like to be living and working in Greece now.
The contributors of the series are:
– Literary agent Evangelia Avloniti, curates and introduces the series.
– Maria-Thalia Carras, an art historian, journalist and co-founder of arts organisation Locus Athens, discusses artists living and working in Athens.
– Angela Dimitrakaki, an academic and acclaimed author of five novels and a short-story collection, writes on apartment culture in Athens.
– Katerina Esslin, author of three short-story collections, muses on love in the city and beyond.
– Miriam Frank, a translator and author of the acclaimed My Innocent Absence, considers life on the quiet island of Serifos.
– Thodoris Georgakopoulos, a journalist and writer best known for Februarios, a novel about the Greek crisis, reflects on making a living writing in Greek.
– Poet, translator and broadcaster Krystalli Glyniadakis, who has recently moved to Oslo, reveals personal exit strategies from the Greek crisis and discusses emigration and immigration.
– Journalist, author and former speechwriter to the Greek foreign minister and prime minister, Rachel Howard shares her own encounters with Greek bureaucracy.
– Photographer and writer Dimitris Karaiskos delves into island culture, surfing and the arts on Tinos.
– Stella Kasdagli, a journalist, translator, youth worker and author of a memoir and a YA novel, explores facets of being a woman and a working mother today in Greece.
– Author of award-winning short stories and articles, Greek-Australian Peter Papathanasiou writes about his village of Florina in northern Greece – both today and in the context of the mass migration of refugees during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
– New York Times photographer Eirini Vourloumis introduces a photo series of interiors of Greek ministries. This accompanies Rachel Howard’s essay.
Letters from Greece will launch on 9 November 2015, with subsequent installments following every four days.
More info can be found at the Letters from Greece website.
