Trio of Cypriot Australian authors shortlisted for international literary honours
Three authors — Luke Icarus Simon, Koraly Dimitriadis and Helena Kidd — are shortlisted across major categories in an international contest featuring submissions from 33 countries
Luke Icarus Simon. Photos: Supplied
Three Cypriot Australians have been named finalists in the Eyelands Book Awards, with Luke Icarus Simon, Koraly Dimitriadis and Helena Kidd all up for an award in their own respective categories.
The Eyelands Book Awards is an international book contest jointly established nine years ago by Eyelands literary magazine and Greek publishing house, Strange Days Books.
This year, submissions were received from 33 countries. The winners will be announced of 30 December.
There is a Grand Prize winner in each of eight categories who will win a trip to Athens, Greece to accept their award and/or translation into Greek for their title.
Simon is a finalist in the LGBTQIA+ category for Swimming In Words, Dimitriadis in the Poetry category for Just Give Me The Pills, and Kidd in the Self Published category for When the Past Awakens: A Mother’s Pain.
Simon’s Swimming In Words is an anthology combining 70 of his poems, many revised and re-shaped, in a collection that explores the human condition, how we relate to family and partners and the shaping of our identity through the shifting currents of love, friendship and grave illness.
Simon told Neos Kosmos it “would be wonderful to win”.
“It is always a pleasant surprise to hear that one’s creative effort has been validated,” Simon said.
“Writing is mostly a very hard slog and a lonely endeavour, and I guess, we all write so that our voice may be read/heard by others so being acknowledged by a panel of literary judges gives us hope that someone IS listening to our work—to our perspective on humanity and the world.
“I have a 20 per cent chance of winning come December 30, and that would cap off a great year during which my first novel, The Art In My Palm was released worldwide and received great acclaim in the USA.”
Koraly Dimitriadis. Photos: Supplied
Dimitriadis’ Just Give Me The Pills tells the story of an unhappily married Greek Australian woman who finds the courage to leave her marriage despite cultural pressures to stay. It captures her journey from uncertainty to self-discovery and finding her feminist voice.
She told Neos Kosmos she is excited to be not only shortlisted but by the prospect that her book could win and be published into Greek.
“I really enjoyed the process of translating my first poetry book Love and Fck Poems into Greek with ASTAMAN publishers in Greece, even though I hated Greek school growing up, which is so ironic,” she said.
“I wrote Just Give Me The Pills to help women who are trying to leave a marriage because when I was trying to leave my marriage I had all this opposition and it was just so challenging and I felt completely alone.
“Even though Just Give Me The Pills has won best book of narrative poetry at American Book Fest, just the idea of Greek translation, to think it could help women in Greece too, that really excites me.”
Kidd’s When the Past Awakens: A Mother’s Pain is the story of Maria Avraam’s (her mother) real and brutally honest account of her life and thoughts, straight from the heart.
Her domineering mother was a constant battle of the mind and spirit. She endured mental and physical abuse from an arranged and forced marriage to a stranger.
Helena Kidd. Photos: Facebook/Supplied
Arriving in Australia from her village in Cyprus presented even more challenges especially when she found herself alone, a deserted wife, with three small children to raise. However, she triumphs through the odds and proves to be a survivor.
Kidd told Neos Kosmos she is honoured for the privilege in being selected as a finalist and for the acknowledgment.
“When the Past Awakens was written with an urgency not only to get the story out to the public but so that my mother Maria Avraam who was 98 years old at the time could see her book in print,” she said.
“My proudest moment was when she held her life story and mine in her hands. She passed away eight months later.
“I continue to write what matters to me and about my Cypriot heritage and hope my readers find something in my stories that resonates with them.”
Last year Kidd won a literature award at the Cyprus Diaspora Forum for When the Past Awakens and her second book When the Past Left.
Also in the Self Published category is Karen Martin for her book Delphi.
‘Delphi’ is the second book in Martin’s Women Unveiled series and continues the journey of Cressida, the protagonist, as she returns to Crete and seeks guidance from the Oracle of Delphi to confront and heal the wounds of her past.
Source Neos Kosmos