Writing Greece: An evening with Sofka Zinovieff and Julian Hoffman

Neither Julian Hoffman nor Sofka Zinovieff are originally from Greece and yet they’ve both devoted a large part of their careers to writing and thinking about this country. Between them, they’ve explored it in novels, nonfiction, short stories, podcasts and essays. One lives in Athens, the other in Prespa – but much connects them. Please join us for an evening of conversation that brings together these two acclaimed and award-winning authors around their shared fascination for their adopted homeland. They’ll talk about their latest books – Sofka’s Stealing Dad and Julian’s Lifelines – and how they’ve been inspired, challenged and changed by writing about Greece.

This event will open the conference Mountains of Greece: Heritage narratives from the past for a sustainable future.

Sofka Zinovieff was born in London, has Russian ancestry and lives in Athens. She has written about Greece as an anthropologist (with a PhD from Cambridge), a journalist and an author. Her latest novel is Stealing Dad and her other books include Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, and the novels Putney and The House on Paradise Street. Podcast documentary series: Athens Unpacked. www.sofkazinovieff.com @SofkaZinovieff

Although he was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, Julian Hoffman has lived for the past quarter of a century beside the Prespa lakes in northern Greece. Along with his new book, Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece, he is the author of two previous titles. Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save our Wild Places was the Highly Commended Finalist for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation in 2020 and a Royal Geographical Society ‘Book of the Year’, while The Small Heart of Things won both the 2012 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. He is currently working on a new book about the Aoos-Vjosa river system flowing through Greece and Albania.