Teacher • Writer • Storyteller
For many years, I did not know where "home" was . . . I am a Greek American, born in Venezuela. My father, a sharp blue-eyed North American engineer, married my mother, a determined dark-haired Greek girl. Since my father worked internationally, they travelled immediately after they got married. We were in Hudibana when I entered this world. When I was a year old, my parents and my brother left Venezuela and moved to Greece. From Greece we went to Borneo, to Saudi Arabia, to South Africa and along the way, we visited another ten or so countries. When I was twelve, my parents decided to forever root themselves in a quiet suburb in San Diego. This is where I spent my teenage years, but every summer I escaped to Greece where a loving, extended family opened their arms to me year after year. Because of my nomadic upbringing, next to a good book, my other favorite pastime is travel.
In 1992, I got a Bachelor's Degree in English, moved to Athens, and became an English teacher. A few years later, I returned to the U.S., pursued a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature (emphasis on Nigerian and Senegalese literature), and became an adjunct professor in San Diego. I love reading novels that teach me something: about a war, a culture, a group of people, a particular time period. A few of my favorite novels include Jane Eyre, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Zorba the Greek, So Long a Letter, The Bluest Eye, East of Eden . . . I could go on and on; my taste is quite eclectic. (Ask me for a recommendation!)
In 2003, I got married, moved to Peru, and taught English at Colegio Roosevelt in Lima for six years. After almost twenty years of teaching full-time, in 2011, I decided to pursue my dream of writing novels. I taught part-time at UCSD, then Pasadena City College while working on my novel, The Greek Persuasion. My novel was published in April 2019 (and has since won several national and international book awards — very exciting!)
In July 2016, I started teaching full-time again at Los Angeles Valley College, and I'm thrilled that for the first time in a very long time I feel “at home.”
Sadly, over the last few years, we lost our three English bulldogs — our babies. They lived long, robust lives, especially for this breed, but we suffered their losses regardless (Oia: 11 and 4 months, Achilles: 13 and 3 months, and Opa: 13 and 5 months). They were born in Peru and moved to the U.S. with us in 2010. After our last girl passed on January 6th, 2023, we said we would never have furbabies again . . .
Then, one day, in September 2023, I fell in love with a picture of a six-pound rescue online; a five-year-old Maltese mama, she was used in a puppy mill. Her face entered my heart and I could not stop thinking about her. Gracie came to her forever home on September 20th, 2023. My favorite thing in the entire world is spending time with Hugo and Gracie. She is cuddly and playful and makes me laugh so much. We love her so much.
I also absolutely love living in LA; teaching, reading, and writing fulfill me. I also enjoy the outdoors, yoga, and travel. Apart from yearly visits to my motherland (Greece), in the last few years my husband and I got to travel to Jordan, Thailand, France, Tahiti, Spain, and my husband's native country, Peru.
I am a person who does not take a single moment in this wild world for granted; I am forever grateful for my life, and as Aristotle said, "The energy of the mind is the essence of life." I do my best to keep my mind crisp and thankful, my heart open.
I grew up with stories—just like these ones: My dad told strangers my mom was Miss Greece 1964; (in the early 60s, she worked as a hotel receptionist and never held the aforementioned title). In the 70s, an Arab Sheik wanted my mother to leave her engineer husband to join his harem; in the 80s, our airplane on the way to South Africa had to do a crash landing into a bed of foam; in the 90s, my Greek grandmother gave me twelve gold bracelets from a toothless friend who owed her money; and in the 2000s, it was time for me to finally take my family’s oral tradition, and commit these and other stories to writing. I still don’t know if these stories are somewhat factual or entirely fictional, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.
In Saudi Arabia, as an eight-year-old, I would make up long tales of camels and princesses; fire and sand dunes. In South Africa, as an eleven-year-old, my stories became more elaborate, a missing treasure, a leopard who could talk, and a Bushman who saved the day. My favorite stories have always been about Greece. The place where everything tastes better, looks bluer, smells nicer.
When I was a few years old, my family and I moved, for a short time, back to my mother's native land, Greece. When my North American father got a new international engineering post, we packed our bags again. By the time I was thirteen, I had lived in six different countries and had visited countless more. In Venezuela, I ate arepas; in Saudi Arabia I rode camels; in South Africa I walked alongside giraffes and lay with leopards, but my favorite memories are in Kamena Vourla, at my grandmother and grandfather’s summer cottage by the sea.
Almost every summer of my life, I swam in the Mediterranean, ate watermelon and tomatoes from my papoo’s garden, and listened to stories that spewed from my yiayia’s mouth. Yiayia, who also grew up in several countries, told me about a green-eyed Bedouin woman who pawned her thick, silver ankle bracelets at my great grandfather’s kiosk in Egypt; because the woman never returned, yiayia’s father thought, with her other-worldly gaze, she was an angel. He used the silver to make a religious icon, which now hangs in my mother’s bedroom. The eyes supposedly move; the “angel’s” eyes watching over all of us.
Yiayia would tell me stories of her youth in Egypt, her trials with two daughters who were so different, and the wimpy son who grew to be her favorite. My mother told me about her travels to Iran, Hong Kong, and Lesotho, and about her life in Nigeria. “I would climb a tree instead of go to school,” she told me, and “I loved swimming in King Farouk’s palace. Those days it was open on weekends to the public.” All my life I listened to the matriarchs of our family; I grew up with their stories and my father’s, so naturally enough, I too became a storyteller.
At Kmart, my first job, I worked in the fitting room. Hidden behind a stack of clothes, I would write for hours in my Hello-Kitty palm-sized notebook. After high school, I got a Bachelor’s Degree in English, moved to Greece, and got my first job teaching English. Three years later, I returned to the U.S, pursued a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature and became an Adjunct English Professor in San Diego.
In my 12th year of teaching, I met my wonderful husband and moved to Peru for six years, securing the position as Head of Department at Colegio Roosevelt, a prestigious American I.B. World School. It was a great experience though seeing extreme poverty juxtaposed with affluence often left me questioning my own choices. It also filled my mental rolodex with new stories I want to tell one day.
Teaching has been a happy accident. And, thankfully, I have been successful and have made great bonds with students over the years. But, after twenty years of teaching, it was time to write the novels that have been in my head, the first one being THE GREEK PERSUASION, a work of fiction inspired by my mother’s and grandmother’s stories as well as my own life experiences. There are not too many things in this world that are certain. But of one thing I am certain: I was born to be a storyteller.