Elias Papadimitrakopoulos was born in Pyrgos, in 1930, the son of a well-known lawyer in the city. His father's death in 1943, during the German occupation, caused the family's financial ruin-and this period is often evoked in his stories, notably in Toothpaste with Chlorophyll and Maritime Hot Baths. Papadimitrakopoulos subsequently studied medicine at the Military Medical School of the University of Thessaloniki (1949-1955), specializing in pathology. He thereafter worked as a military doctor, serving in the Greek Army until his retirement in 1983. His first contributions to literary reviews began in the 1960s, notably with the appearance in 1962 of his first short story in the magazine Argo. During the same years, he began to publish-as a short-story writer, film critic, and literary critic-in other important magazines such as Tachidromos, Dialogos, Anti, Khartis, Kroniko, and To Tetarto. One of the most beloved and admired Greek short-story writers, Papadimitrakopoulos received the Petros Haris Foundation Prize from the Academy of Athens in 2010 and the National Literary Award in 2015. His collected short stories are now gathered in a six-volume set published by Gavriilidis. He lives in Athens and, during the summer, on the island of Paros.
John Taylor (b. 1952) is an American writer, critic, and translator who lives in France. Among his many translations of French, Italian, and Greek literature are books by Philippe Jaccottet, Pierre Chappuis, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Georges Perros, Jacques Dupin, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Voélin, Catherine Colomb, Lorenzo Calogero, Franca Mancinelli, Alfredo de Palchi, and Elias Petropoulos. About the latter Greek writer, he has written Harsh Out of Tenderness: The Greek Poet and Urban Folklorist Elias Petropoulos. Taylor's translations have been awarded grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, Pro Helvetia, and the Sonia Raiziss Charitable Foundation. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently The Dark Brightness, Grassy Stairways, Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees, and a double book co-authored with Pierre Chappuis, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges.
Alekos Fassianos was born in Athens in 1935. He is widely considered to be one of Greece's most significant and popular visual artists. He first trained in music and then studied painting at the School of Fine Arts of the National Technical University of Athens (1956-1960), where the painter Yannis Moralis was his chief instructor. In 1960, he earned a scholarship from the French government to study lithography at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He thereafter long lived in the French capital, often dividing his time between Paris and Athens. He now lives full-time in Athens, where the Alekos Fassianos Museum will soon open. He has illustrated books written by many important French, Greek, and other international poets, and has produced countless livres d 'artistes for bibliophiles. His art works are housed in the best museums, art galleries, and private collections throughout the world, particularly in Athens, Paris, London, Geneva, and other European cities, as well as in Dubai, Russia, Tokyo, New York, Sao Paulo, and Melbourne. The artist's highly personal, anthropocentric style has evolved, over the years, into a multifaceted visual treatise of everyday life and constitutes a moving symbol of postwar Greece.
