Title: A conversation with award-winning Cypriot author Louiza Papaloizou
Speakers: Louiza Papaloizou (author) & Prof. Dr. Marina Terkourafi (professor of Sociolinguistics, Leiden University)
Welcome address: H.E. Frances-Galatia Lanitou Williams (ambassador of the Republic of Cyprus)
Date: 21 April 2023
Time: 15:30
Location: University Library (Singel 425), room: Doelenzaal, (no registration needed)
Language: English
Summary
A discussion with the Cypriot author of the novel Vouni (Το βουνί, The mountain), about the intricacies of the concept of “place” in a divided country, about the difficulties of writing a novel, when the writer’s “mother tongue” is not the same as her written language (the novel makes use of both the Koine Greek language and the Cypriot variety of Greek), about the boundaries between fiction and reality, but also about the continuities and discontinuities that connect the fictional characters, while structuring a polyphonic and multi-prismatic narrative.
About the speakers
Louiza Papaloizou was born in Morphou (1972) and grew up in Limassol (Cyprus). She studied in England and then in New York where she lived for eleven years. For her book of short stories Apeiloumena Eidi (Publications Afi, Limassol, 2010) she won the National Prize for Literature for a first-time author. The novel Vouni (To Rodakio Editions, Athens, 2020) is her second book and has been awarded with the National Prize for Fiction in Cyprus and the State Novel Prize 2021 in Greece respectively.
Marina Terkourafi was born in Limassol (1972) and grew up in Crete (Greece). She studied and worked in the UK (Cambridge) and the US (University of Illinois) before taking up the chair of sociolinguistics at the University of Leiden (Center for Linguistics). Terkourafi specializes in pragmatics (the study of meanings created in context) and sociolinguistics (the ways in which people signal their identities through language). She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Cyprus on the use of politeness markers, the interplay between local and standard codes, and processes of language change since the Middle Ages.