BOSTON – The Department of Classical Studies at Boston University dedicated this year’s Greek national ‘OXI’ day to Greek women writers, their contribution to Modern Greek culture, and the importance of their translation.

In her opening speech, the event’s hostess Kelly Polychroniou, Master Lecturer at the Department of Classical Studies at BU, highlighted the importance of literature in modern society and its critical role in elucidating our understanding of the world. Prof. Polychroniou also stressed the significance of female authors in Greek literary tradition from antiquity today. After that meaningful introduction, four Modern Greek students gave brief overviews of the lives and works of the two authors from Greece: Amanda Michalopoulou and Kallia Papadaki, as well as the two professors of the panel, Vilelmini Sosoni, Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the Ionian University-Greece, and Karen Emmerich, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

Gradually, the event transformed into a fascinating literary symposium with these four charismatic women. The two authors read favorite excerpts from their books and discussed the principal issues, inner mechanisms, and soothing magic of writing.

Their dialogue with the experts focused on the art of translation as the authors and professors delved into the relation between the originals and their translation, reflecting on the limits, challenges, and perspectives of translation, the difference and proximity between translation and interpretation, the boundary between reality and fiction, and the oscillation between subjectivity and objectivity. Both writers and professors underlined the contribution of the translation to the contact of cultures and the study of different aspects of our multilingual world.

At the end of the event, participants had the opportunity to meet the writers and receive for free signed copies of their books.