Meet our Athens Literary Salon speakers!

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Academic, writer and performance artist Sam Albatros in conversation with culture writer and host Tom Hall on May 21 at 7.30pm at Insider Terrace

Writer, poet, and performance artist Sam Albatros speaks to culture editor  and host Tom Hall about their powerful memoir on growing up gay in Greece. Their latest novel titled Dad, I want you to be ashamed of me is a queer coming-of-age story that portrays queer life in Greece in original and truthful ways, not idealizing them, nor making them strictly tragic. At the heart of the novel is the son’s (main character) relationship with his father. Throughout the narrative, which alternates with diary excerpts and poems, the book addresses the protagonist’s struggle to shake off the skins of their former selves, and deep dives into current issues in Greek society: immigration abroad, toxic family dynamics, and the gay experience in Greece.

Sam Albatros is an academic, writer, poet, translator and an internationally-acclaimed performance artist based in London. Their work has been supported by prestigious writing residencies in Berlin (Literarisches Colloquium Berlin) and Leipzig (Goethe- Institut Thessaloniki, HALLE 14, Edit), and they have been the recipient of a Stavros Niarchos Foundation & Artworks Fellowship for young artists. Their latest novel is titled “Dad, I want you to be ashamed of me”.

Tom Hall is a culture, food and drink writer, host and presenter. Two years of a PhD at Queen Mary on Early Tudor food and diet taught him that his interest wasn’t purely academic and nor was he. His interest in the pleasure of dining started with the joyous family gatherings that were the heartbeat of his large family’s infrequent reunions. He was later cofounder of a video based online magazine that involved interviewing hundreds of leaders in many fields, including chefs.

May 21: Sam Albatros in conversation with culture writer and host Tom Hall  at 7.30pm at Insider Terrace, Archelaou 8, Pangrati. Please email info@insider-magazine.gr to reserve your place. A wine and cheese reception will follow the discussion, by Wines of Athens. Books available for sale. Please arrive at least 20 minutes before the start of the event.

Conservationist and writer Julian Hoffman in conversation with acclaimed author Sofka Zinovieff on May 28 at 6pm at The University of Athens’ History Museum

Wainwright-shortlisted writer and conservationist Julian Hoffman whose Irreplaceable The Fight to Save our Wild Places is a passionate and lyrical work of reportage and advocacy, presses on the need to support wilding projects to bring back diversity of life. As a writer, he brings a lyrical eye to this world of great physical beauty and gnarled legacy. As a campaigner, he claims “not to be in blind opposition to progress but in opposition to blind progress.” Julian Hoffman speaks to writer and anthropologist Sofka Zinovieff. The conversation will be held in English at the The University of Athens’ History Museum from 6 to 7pm.

Writer Julian Hoffman

Julian Hoffman is the author of two books. His latest, Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save our Wild Places, was the Highly Commended Finalist for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation 2020. It was also a Royal Geographical Society ‘Book of the Year’ and was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Book Prize in 2021. His previous book, The Small Heart of Things, won the 2012 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction, described by the judge, Terry Tempest Williams, as a “tapestry of embodied stories that explores a complexity of ideas.” The book went on to win a 2014 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. Although born in the northeast of England and having grown up in Canada, Julian has lived in a mountain village above the Prespa lakes in northern Greece for over twenty years. As well as an author, he’s also a passionate conservationist and advocate for greater access to green spaces. 

Sofka Zinovieff ©Thomas Gravanis

An anthropologist by training with a Ph.D from Cambridge, London-born Sofka Zinovieff  has Russian ancestry and has lived in Greece for several years. Sofka is the author of five books, the latest of which, Putney (2018), an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a much older man, has been described as ‘Lolita in reverse: a novel for the #MeToo age which addresses the minefield of sexual consent.’  In addition to one other novel, The House on Paradise Street (2012) about an Athenian family divided by civil war and the contemporary crisis, she has written three works of non-fiction: Her inquiring, anthropological memoir Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens (2004),  a biography of her intrepid Russian grandmother, Sofka Skipwith, Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life (2007) and a biography of her maternal grandfather, the noted eccentric aristocrat Robert Heber-Percy,  Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me (2014). Her writing has appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator and the Independent.

Poet and award-winning translator Joshua Barley in conversation with biographer and curator Ian Collins on May 28 at 7.30 pm at The University of Athens History Museum

The second event  features award-winning writer Joshua Barley, whose latest book Greek Folk Songs brings the songs to an English readership for the first time in over a century, capturing the lyricism of the Greek in modern English verse. The Greek folk songs—Dimotika Tragoudia in Greek— are songs of the Greek countryside, from island towns to mountain villages. They have been passed down from generation to generation in a centuries-long oral tradition, lasting until the present. They are songs of every aspect of old Greek life: from love songs and ballads, to laments for the dead, to songs of travel and brigands. Written down at the start of the nineteenth century, they are the first works of modern Greek poetry, playing a crucial role in forming the country’s modern language and literature. Still known and sung today, they are the Homer of modern Greece. Joshua Barley speaks to Ian Collins, Runciman-award winning biographer and curator. The conversation will be held in English at the University of Athens History Museum from 7.30 to 8.30pm.

Poet and translator Joshua Barley

Joshua Barley is a translator of modern Greek literature and writer. He read Classics at Oxford and modern Greek at King’s College, London. His translations of Ilias Venezis’ Serenity and Makis Tsitas’ God Is My Witness are published by Aiora Press. A Greek Ballad, selected poems of Michális Ganás (translated with David Connolly), is published by Yale University Press.) Greek Folk Songs by Aiora Press 2022 (shortlisted for the Greek State Prize for translation), Walking in Athens by Nikos Vatopoulos, Metaichmio 2018 and  Athens Tales, Oxford University Press (forthcoming)

Biographer and Curator Ian Collins

Ian Collins is an independent art writer and curator. He has written numerous biographies and monographs, including ground-breaking studies of John Craxton, James Dodds, Rose Hilton, Joan Leigh Fermor, John McLean and Guy Taplin. His three-volume history of East Anglian art, and many features for the Eastern Daily Press, led to the 2013 Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia exhibition and a record audience for the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. He has also worked with the Aldeburgh Festival, British Museum, Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Benaki Museum in Athens and A.G. Leventis Gallery in Nicosia. He lives in England and Greece.