Ersi Sotiropoulos
Award-Winning Poet and Novelist
Fellow, Institute for Ideas and Imagination
Ersi Sotiropoulos is a poet and novelist who lives in Athens, Greece. Her work has been translated into many languages, and has been awarded in Greece with the National Book Prize twice, the Book Critics’ Award and the Athens Academy Prize. She has also received the Dante Alighieri Prize for her poetry in Italy and has been shortlisted for the European Book Prize. She has written scripts for film and television and participated in exhibitions of visual poetry. Her novel What’s Left of the Night won the Prix Méditerranée Étranger 2017 in France and the ALTA Award 2019 in the US. We sat down with Ersi to talk about her her journey, her work, and her inspiration.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I studied Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology in Italy. Then Ι served as the cultural attaché at the Greek Embassy in Rome. I started reading and writing poetry when I was eight years old. Literature is the only constant in my life and I went back to it when I resigned from the Embassy.
Who are the women that have inspired you?
Sappho, Carson McCullers, Jean Rhys, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, are the first names that come to my mind. Barbara Strozzi too, the amazing composer and singer of the baroque period. Women warriors as Laskarina Bouboulina, the naval commander of the Greek war of Independence. The Amazons of Greek mythology.
What are you currently working on at the Institute?
I’m working on June, a novel that portrays the blurred boundaries between innocence and guilt. Its time span is just 60 minutes -- the hour it takes to undergo a brain MRI.
How has the influence of women changed in the literature and poetry space?
Women write and publish much more than ever before but this is not always a guarantee of the originality of the work. Sometimes the old stereotypes persist. We need strong innovative voices. Sylvia Plath, Elisabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, were among them. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc to mention a contemporary one.
Looking back, what do you wish you had known when you were just starting out as a young writer? What advice would you give to a young female writers today?
To never give up.
Do you have any book recommendations?
My Antonia by Willa Cather
History by Elsa Morante
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
