Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis is an American writer, essayist and translator whose work has profoundly reshaped contemporary short fiction. Celebrated for her radically concise prose, she transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary through stories that are at once witty, intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant. Blurring the boundaries between fiction, essay and prose poetry, her writing is distinguished by its precision, originality and acute attention to the rhythms of thought and language.
Alongside her fiction, Davis has made an exceptional contribution to literary translation, establishing herself as one of the foremost translators of French literature into English. Best known for her acclaimed translations of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, she has also translated works by Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris and Michel Foucault.
She is the author of numerous acclaimed books, including Break it Down, Almost No Memory, Varieties of Disturbance, Can’t and Won’t, The Collected Stories and the novel The End of the Story. Her fiction has appeared in publications including the New Yorker, The Paris Review and Harper’s.
Among her many honors are a MacArthur Fellowship (2003), the Man Booker International Prize (2013), and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story (2020). Through her fiction and translations alike, Lydia Davis has expanded the possibilities of literary form and established herself as one of the most influential writers of her generation.
Christodoulos Makris
Christodoulos Makris is “one of Ireland’s foremost avant-garde poets” (The Irish Times). He has published five books of poetry – most recently ‘It Reeks of Radio’ (BLR Editions), an ‘Irish Poetry 2023’ selection for The Stinging Fly magazine – and several other releases in various media. His durational writing, performance and recording project DIAL, in partnership with Diatribe Records, is ongoing since 2021. His work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, fallow, and elsewhere. He was Writer in Residence at Maynooth University (2018-19). Recent awards include a Curatorial Commission from Museum of Literature Ireland (2024), a Residency at Irish Arts Center, New York (2024-25) and a Public Poetry Commission from Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Galway (2025).
COLLABORATORS:
Joanna Mattrey is a New York City/Dublin based violist, composer, improviser, and multimedia artist, whose works blend installation, video, sound, and movement, and are often site-specific.
Keith Lindsay is a multidisciplinary artist working with sound, visual media, and generative technology. His practice explores the entanglements of ecology and algorithm, translating natural rhythms into audiovisual works through custom software, sound, moving image, and immersive installations.
Christos Chryssopoulos
Christos Chryssopoulos (Athens, 1968) is a writer, essayist, literary theorist, and photographer. His work spans fiction, essays, and literary chronicles, and to date he has published twenty books.
He has received the Academy of Athens Award (2008), the international Balkanika Award (2015), as well as the French Prix Ravachol (2013) and Prix Laure Bataillon (2014). In 2015, the French Republic bestowed upon him the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.
He was Writer in Residence of the City of Zurich (2020), an Iowa Fellow of the International Writing Program (IWP, 2007), and is a member of the European Cultural Parliament (ECP). He founded and directed the international literary festival DaseinFest in Athens (2006–2011) and served as Assistant Artistic Director of the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus (2019–2020).
He has lectured and participated in numerous festivals throughout Europe and the United States, and has edited collective volumes and publishing series in Greece and abroad. His books have been translated into many languages.
He is a certified Narrative Therapist and works with Creative Writing and Therapy practices. He is the founding-director of the KAIROS FOUNDATION https://www.kairosculture.org/
Doros Georgiou & Marios Agathokleous
Doros Georgiou was born in 1983 and comes from Limassol, Cyprus. He studied English Literature and has a master's degree in Special Education. His first poetry collection, titled "UMAMI" (Technodromion Publications), was released in December 2020. It was translated into Serbian in 2023. His second poetry collection, "Ta Glossematica" (Technodromion Publications), came out in November 2022. In April 2026, his third poetry collection (Arnoglossa) was published by ARMIDA publications. Several of his poems can be found on websites and literary magazines.
Marios Agathokleous was born in 1948 in Limassol. He worked for forty years as an observer of natural phenomena. During the 1980s, together with Costas Makrides and Christos Melidis, he brought out the literary magazine I Amaxa [The Carriage]. They also founded and operated the café-theatre Ta Perix. In the 1990s, he served on the Board of Directors of ETHAL, the Limassol Theatre Development Company. In 2019,
Agathokleous alongside Pambis Anagiotos, Kyriakos Anagiotos, and Nena Filousi presented the poetry performance 4 as part of theYard.Residency.19 festival. In 2019 and 2020, he collaborated with the MITOS Centre of Performing Arts, appearing in Homeriad by Demetris Demetriades (as Homer) and Sophocles’s Antigone (as Tiresias). He has published six poetry collections, the most recent being The gate of good memories (Armida 2023) as well as a critical study of the poetry of Pambisb Anagiotos (Armida 2026). In 2019, his collected poetry was translated into Bulgarian by Vasiliki Hadjipapa and published under the title Trojan Horse (Plamuk, Sofia).
Feraia Nikolaou & Maria Christodoulou
Feraia Nikolaou is a creator of audiovisual works with an emphasis on direction, sound design. She has participated in short films as Assistant Director and Sound Designer, both within the framework of the Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and in external productions. Her work focuses on the relationship between sound and image as means of storytelling, exploring issues of memory, identity and human experience. She explores the subtle emotional and social dimensions of everyday life, giving particular emphasis to the creation of atmosphere and the narrative power of sound.
Feraia Nikolaou is a creator of audiovisual works with an emphasis on direction, sound design. She has participated in short films as Assistant Director and Sound Designer, both within the framework of the Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and in external productions. Her work focuses on the relationship between sound and image as means of storytelling, exploring issues of memory, identity and human experience. She explores the subtle emotional and social dimensions of everyday life, giving particular emphasis to the creation of atmosphere and the narrative power of sound.
Fisher & Montenegro
Montenegrofisher is the collaborative practice of artists Luna Montenegro and Adrian Fisher, merging poetry, performance, voice, drawing, sound, and film. Their interdisciplinary, site-responsive works explore the poetics of human and more-than-human encounters, often using multilingual live vocal improvisation, graphic scores, gesture, and participatory structures that invite audiences into shared spaces of attention and transformation. Across residencies, festivals, galleries, and outdoor sites, their practice traces relationships between landscape, memory, architecture, ecology, and collective presence. Recent work includes performances as:
“Tidal Shifts” (Uru Art Harbour, Kochi, India 2026) “Rising and Sinking like Mountains in Streams” (Hay Festival, 2026 a Vietnam UK Collaboration) “Voiced: The Festival of Endangered Languages” (Barbican Centre,London 2025), the commissioned film “The Ectoplasmic Event,” and research-based performance “Geometries of the Intertidal” (London, 2025). Their ongoing collaborative film project, mmmmmfilms, explores cinema through poetics, performance, landscape, and voice.
Iris Colomb
Iris Colomb is a poet and artist searching for new ways of constructing, performing and experiencing text through indeterminacy, subversion, constraints, duration and improvisation.
Iris’ first solo exhibition, ‘Try! Try! Try! Again!’, featuring visual, sonic and performative works, was showcased by the UK’s National Poetry Library in 2025. She has published five pamphlets, and her first full-length collection Nothing Intensifies came out in 2025 with Pamenar Press.
Iris has given individual, collaborative, interactive, and durational performances across the UK, in various international festivals in Europe, and in Chile. Recent sound releases include ‘A map has always been an attempt’ (Strategic Tape Reserve, 2025) and Buzz (CD, Flaming Pines, 2025), both with [something’s happening] and ‘BLAST is correct’ with TheThreeFeet (CD, 2:13 Music, 2026).
Iris is a consulting editor of Filigree Press. She currently co-runs the long-running reading series ‘Xing The Line’ and the interdisciplinary roaming improvisation series ‘dispersal’.
Jeff Hilson
Jeff Hilson is a British poet, academic, editor and critic. Known for his explorations of form, language and humour, his work has contributed to the experimental and innovative poetry scene in London and beyond, and has been featured in performances, public journals and other publications. Hilson has taught poetry and creative writing at Roehampton University for over 20 years, with a focus on contemporary and innovative poetry, experimental traditions and poetry schools from Europe, the UK and the USA, while exploring poetic forms such as the sonnet, the prose poem and visual/concrete poetry.
He is the author of five books of poetry - stretchers (Reality Street, 2006), Bird bird (Landfill, 2009), In The Assarts (Veer, 2010), Latanoprost Variations (Boiler House, 2017) and Organ Music (Crater, 2020). He also edited The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008) which poet Ron Silliman described as “the finest collection of contemporary sonnets ever put together…one of those books that makes you realise how important and powerful a truly good anthologist can be”. He is now working on another manuscript, “The Lewisham Introits”, and writing very small plays about fungi.
Jeff Hilson runs, with poet Iris Colomb, the poetry reading series Xing the Line, founded by Hilson and poet Sean Bonney 25 years ago. Xing the line is an event for poets, language and performance artists to share their work in an intimate yet powerful circle of underground and independent meetings once a month.
Kinga Toth
Kinga Toth is a writer, multimedia artist and performer, she installs and performs her works in exhibitions, concerts (English, German, Hungarian) 2026 She received the KELAG-Price by ingeborg Bachmann Price, 2020: Hugo Ball Price and Bernhard Heidsieck Price for her international experiment literature works. Her new book, MariaMachina, has been published 2026 by Matthes&Seitz. At the moment she is a guest artist by Akademie der Künste in Olevano Rome. www.kingatoth.com English works: We build a city (The knives, forks and spoons 2020, OFFSPRING, YAMA 2020, AnnaMaria sings, PRAE 2020.
Maria-Sophia Christodoulou
Maria-Sophia Christodoulou is a British-Cypriot poet, artist, teacher, and PhD candidate at the University College Cork, supervised by Dr. Bahriye Kemal and under the mentorship of Anthony Anaxagorou. Her poetry pamphlet, A Disbelief of Flesh, was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2022, exploring themes of heritage, family, and personal identity. Her PhD research focuses on intergenerational trauma within the Cypriot diaspora, examining its symptoms and forms of resistance through poetry.
Maria Kouvarou
Maria Kouvarou (m.ouv) is a multi-disciplinary artist and holds a PhD in Musicology, specializing in Sociology. She has published three poetry collections and a novella, as well as short stories and poems in anthologies and literary journals. Her short stories and poems received acknowledgments and prizes in literary competitions, while her poems have also been translated into other languages. She is included in the Register of Cultural Ambassadors of the Deputy Ministry of Culture.
She is a performer in spoken word, soundscape poetry with the use of loop machine, piano, and song. She is also the presenter and co-producer of the UCY Voice 95.2 radio program “Made in Cyprus,” and previously served as co-presenter and co-producer of the program “Literature on the Airwaves” (CyBC).
In March 2025, she was named Cyprus National Slam Champion at the annual poetry slam competition organized by Ideogramma. In May 2026, she represented Cyprus at the Slam Poetry World Cup in Paris, where she placed fifth.
Maya Caspari
Maya Caspari is a poet and researcher from London. Her poetry has been published in journals including The Poetry Review, Ambit, Propel and Wasafiri. She has been highly commended in the Forward Prizes, longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Almost, with Tenderness was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2025. Her monograph Memory, Violence and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary World Literature is forthcoming in 2027. She is a Lecturer at the University of York.
Nelmarie du Preez & Marina Christodoulidou
Nelmarie du Preez is an artist and researcher based in Amsterdam, working across text, sound, moving image, performance, and computational arts. Her practice stages encounters between bodies and technological systems, treating machines as co-actors in the formation of belief, anticipation, trust, and agency. She holds an MFA in Fine Art (2014) and an MA in Computational Arts (2013) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa, Department of Art and Music. Her work has been presented internationally, including at Ribot Gallery, Milan; Whitechapel Gallery's London Open; the International Digital Arts Biennale, Montreal; and Home Works 7 in Beirut. Her current work consists of live prototypes that use text, code, and performance to trace attention and presence through motion, uncertainty, and collective conditions. She is part of the Reading Vigil for Free Palestine.
COLLABORATORS:
Marina Christodoulidou is a Limassol-based curator and researcher. Her practice traverses curatorial formats, often taking the form of discursive exhibitions, film, writing, and architecture. She was a curatorial fellow at de Appel (2024) and currently tutors in the COOP study program at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) with Noor Abuarafeh. Through her participation in de Appel’s Curatorial Programme (2023), together with her peers she initiated Hope is a Discipline. Among other collaborative projects, Marina co-directs The Broken Pitcher (2020–ongoing) with Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Peter Eramian. Previously, she worked with the Cyprus Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale (2015–19) and co-curated the Anachoresis project, which represented Cyprus at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021). Drawn to reimagining alternative infrastructures, she co-founded pitcherzzz, a Cyprus-based cooperative residency space, together with Natascha Sadr Haghighian.
Phoebe Gannisi
Phoebe Gannisi (1964) is a poet and architect, and a professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly. She is a graduate of the National Technical University of Athens (1998) and holds a PhD in Languages, History and Cultures of the Ancient Worlds (1994, University of Lyon II-Lumière). She lives in Volos and has two children. She creates poetry that she presents through multimedia, with over 50 performances, videos, sound collages and spatial audiovisual installations or reading objects.
She has published eight books of poetry, most recently Thetis and Aedon (Kastaniotis, 2021), The Chimera (Kastaniotis, 2019) and Rhapsody (Gutenberg, 2017). Brian Sneeden’s english translation of Homerica was selected by Anne Carson as one of the best books she read in 2017. New Directions published Cicada (2022) and Chimera (2024), translated by Brian Sneeden. Both were shortlisted for the U.S. National Poetry Translation Awards. Fitzcarraldo published the book Goatsong (2025).
At the heart of her interdisciplinary work lies her relationship with place, explored through the field of ecopoetry, with themes such as farming, the memory of the earth, the sound of geography, animal poets, as well as issues of motherhood and love, power and voice, symbiosis and species. Through her methods, she restores polyphonies that spring from the land and the embodied ethnography of living human and non-human beings that inhabit it.
In 2016, she presented the lecture-performance Nomos_The Land Song in New York. In 2024, she presented her books Chimera (New Directions, 2024) through a series of performance-lectures in the U.S., and in 2025-26, Goatsong, in Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol and London.
Thanos Stathopoulos
Thanos Stathopoulos was born in Athens in 1963. He has published ten books, nine of which are collected in the volume The Adaptation of Myself at 06:30 (Ikaros, 2023). Food Intake (Technodromion, 2026) is his tenth book. From 1999 to 2024 he worked as a producer for the Third Programme of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERA). He is the co‑publisher of the online art magazine kaput. In parallel, as an exhibition curator, he has curated seven solo and group exhibitions and has written texts on the work of contemporary Greek and international artists. Together with Chloe Akrithakis, he co‑edited Alexis Akrithakis’ diaries (Writing Painting: Diaries 1960–1990, Agra, 2024). He has also been a contributor to the newspapers Eleftherotypia (1995–2007) and Kathimerini (2005–2014), writing book reviews.
