Nektaria Anastasiadou is the 2019 winner of the Zografeios Agon, a Greek-language literary award founded in 19th-century Constantinople. Her first novel, A Recipe for Daphne, written in English, was published by AUC Press in 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Runciman Award, longlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award, and a finalist with an honorable mention for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award. In 2023, Anastasiadou represented Turkey and Greece as a visiting fellow in creative writing at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Her second novel, Στα Πόδια της Αιώνιας Άνοιξης/At the Foot of Eternal Spring, written in Istanbul Greek, was published by Papadopoulos in 2023. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies including Stories from the Center of the World (City Lights, 2024) and Κωνσταντινούπολη: Νόστος στον χώρο και τον χρόνο (Ellinoekdotiki, 2024). She is a contributing editor for The Markaz Review.

The search for Şemsinur took me on a voyage in time from Istanbul to Chios and back again. All the while I was accompanied by the souls that had likely been walking beside me before I ever met them in fiction. I still hear their whisper: “Μμε φοάστε.”

Nektaria Anastasiadou