A panel discussion with Karen Van Dyck, Alicia E. Stallings and Fr. John Raffan.

Haris Vlavianos will be the moderator of the discussion.

Karen Van Dyck is Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Modern Greek Literature in the Classics Department at Columbia University. She is the author of Kassandra and the Censors: Greek Poetry since 1967 (1998; Greek ed., 2002) and the editor and translator of The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding: Three Collections by Contemporary Greek Women Poets (1998) and The Scattered Papers of Penelope: New and Selected Poems by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke (2009). She also edited and contributed translations to A Century of Greek Poetry (2004), The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present (2009), and Austerity Measures: New Greek Poetry (2016; Greek ed. 2017), which won the London Hellenic Prize. Her writing on Modern Greek poetry and translation has appeared in such journals as the Los Angeles Review of Books, PN Review, and World Literature Today.

A. E. Stallings is an American poet, critic, and translator who has lived in Athens since 1999.  She studied Classics at the University of Georgia and at Oxford University.  She has published three volumes of poetry ("Olives" was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Aware); a fourth is forthcoming in the autumn with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  She has published a verse translation of Lucretius' The Nature of Things with Penguin Classics and more recently Hesiod's Works and Days.  She has received a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.

John Raffan is a Priest of the Greek Orthodox Church at present serving in the Church of Agioi Anargyroi in Solonos Street in the centre of Athens. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1988 he served in Parishes in Crete and in his native Scotland before taking up his present appointment in Athens. Prior to entering the priesthood Fr John Raffan translated a number of books and articles in the fields of Classical Studies, Continental Philosophy and Social Theory from German and French, and since becoming a Priest he has undertaken from time to time a variety of translations from Modern Greek in the fields of Classical Studies, Greek Orthodox Culture and Intellectual History and with some trepidation has made occasional forays into Modern Greek Literature. He has also worked in editing and translating Greek Patristic texts. His edition and translation of the Psalter Commentary by Euthymius Zigabenus is available on his academia.edu page, and a draft diplomatic edition of the Doctrina Patrum (from ms. Vat. gr. 2200) is also available there.
In the context of his priestly duties he is constantly involved in the translation of liturgical and ecclesiastical texts.

Haris Vlavianos studied Economics and Philosophy at the University of Bristol (B.Sc) and Politics, History and International Relations (M.Phil, D.Phil) at the University of Oxford (Trinity College). His doctoral thesis entitled, Greece 1941-1949: From Resistance to Civil War, was published by Macmillan (1992) and was awarded the “Fafalios Foundation” Prize. He has published twelve collections of poetry, including Vacation in Reality (2009), which won the prestigious “Diavazo” Poetry Prize and was short-listed for National Poetry Prize, and Sonnets of Despair (2011), which was also short-listed for the National Poetry Prize. He has also published a collection of thoughts and aphorisms on poetry and poetics entitled, The Other Place (1994), a book of short literary fragments entitled, The Double Dream of Language (2010) [in collaboration with Christos Chrissopoulos] and a book of essays, entitled Does Poetry Matter? Thoughts on a Useless Art (2009). Moreover, he has published a History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku, which was published in England by “Dedalus Press” (translated into English by Peter Mackridge). He has translated in book form the works of well-known writers and is the  is the editor of the influential literary journal “Poetics” and Poetry Editor at “Patakis Publications”.