MANI LIT FEST
Emma Cowell Emma is based in Greece with her husband, Tony who is also a writer. A former actress and BBC presenter, segueing from being paid to talk for a living into writing was a natural progression, since storytelling has been at the heart of her career to date. Outside of work, Emma is a keen angler and is attempting to improve her Greek language skills . . . she is yet to achieve a level of proficiency outside of tavernas and bakeries.
Carol McGrath Following a first degree in English and History, Carol McGrath completed an MA in Creative Writing from The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast, followed by an MPhil in English from University of London. She is published by Headline. The Handfasted Wife, first in a trilogy about the royal women of 1066 was shortlisted for the RoNAS in 2014. The Swan-Daughter and The Betrothed Sister complete this highly acclaimed trilogy. Mistress Cromwell, a best-selling historical novel about Elizabeth Cromwell, wife of Henry VIII’s statesman, Thomas Cromwell, was republished by Headline in 2020. The Silken Rose, first in a Medieval She-Wolf Queens Trilogy, featuring Ailenor of Provence, saw publication in April 2020. This was followed by The Damask Rose. The Stone Rose was published April 2022. The Stolen Crown 2023 and July 2024 The Lost Queen about Berengaria of Navarre and The Third Crusade. She is currently writing a sequel to Mistress Cromwell. Carol writes Historical non-fiction as well as fiction. Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England was published in February 2022 by Pen & Sword. She frequently speaks at Conferences and gives podcast interviews.
Find Carol on her website: www.carolcmcgrath . Sign up for her regular newsletter using the relevant home page drop down.
Deborah Swift Deborah Swift is the author of twenty novels of historical fiction. Her Renaissance novel The Poison Keeper has been optioned for TV and was recently voted Best Book of the Decade by the Wishing Shelf Readers Award. Her WW2 novel Past Encounters was the winner of the BookViral Millennium Award, and is one of seven books set in that era. Her most recent novel is Last Train to Freedom, a wartime story set on the Trans-Siberian Express. Deborah has an MA in Creative Writing and enjoys mentoring other writers and teaching writing classes for her local adult education college. She lives in the North of England close to the mountains and the sea.
Brenda Grate is a certified Practical Herbalist, holistic health coach, and author who lives in a stone house on the Mani peninsula with her husband Chad. Her first herbal book, The Mediterranean Herbalist: Stories and Herbal Remedies from Italy and Greece, will be released in fall 2026 by Book Shelter. The book blends memoir, plant medicine, and the herbal traditions of the Mediterranean, drawn from years of living and practicing in Greece and Italy. Brenda is also the author of four novels, including The Invisible Girl. Alongside her writing, she works one-on-one with clients, guiding them through plant-based protocols rooted in constitutional assessment and ancestral wisdom. She has ghostwritten more than fifteen nonfiction books through her business Grate Writes. Find her at mugwortandmeadow.com, where she publishes the monthly Herbal Letters.
.jpg)
Evan Fallenberg is the author of the novels Light Fell (Soho Press 2008), When We Danced on Water (HarperCollins 2011) and The Parting Gift. (Other Press 2018) and a translator of Hebrew fiction, plays and films including Meir Shalev's A Pigeon and a Boy, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. His first novel, Light Fell, won an American Library Association Award for Literature and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.
Fallenberg teaches at Bar-Ilan University, co-founded the Vermont College of Fine Arts International MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation, and taught at City University of Hong Kong. He is the recipient of writing and translation fellowships in the US, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland, China, and Italy and is the founder of Arabesque: An Arts and Residency Center in Old Acre. Fallenberg was artistic director of the Translation Residency program at Mishkenot Shaananim in Jerusalem from its inception until 2021.
Gill Page I’m a historian of medieval Greece - my ‘Being Byzantine’ was published by CUP in 2008, and I’ve just completed my first novel in a series set in the thirteenth-century Peloponnese. It’s called ‘The Ship of Stone’, and the action ranges excitingly from Elis to Monemvasia! For the last twenty-five years I’ve been working as a medieval musician with my partner Paul in our ensemble Trouvere. We specialise in the music of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which we love to research, record and recreate. Every year we host Medieval Music in the Dales near our home in Yorkshire - it’s the UK’s only festival of medieval music and attracts a worldwide audience to the beautiful Yorkshire Dales. Having first studied classics before moving to medieval Greek history, I’ve been visiting Greece since the 1980s and I lived in the country from 1993-1996. Greece, and in particular the Peloponnese, feels like a second home.
Claire Papamichail was born in Athens in 1963 and studied Sociology in the Panteion University.
She has worked more than 40 years as a freelance literary translator from English to Greek. Among the authors she has translated are Maeve Binchy, Marian Keys, Graham Greene, Sebastian Faulks, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Madeleine Miller, Alex Michaelides, Olivia Manning, Damon Galgut. She has also translated The Saga of the Century by Rebecca West and The Promise by Damon Galgut, which won the Booker Prize 2021, as well as The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023.
Except from some attempts at poetry as a favour to friends, The Book of Katerina by Auguste Corteau (Parthian Books) is the first book she translated from Greek to English.
Most recent translations include: The Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, Anthem by Ayn Rand and Malafrena by Ursula Le Guin.
Pandora Bethea was born in Athens, Greece and grew up in Iran until the age of ten. She received her high school diploma from the American Community School of Athens (ACS). Because she was surrounded by many cultures, languages and tradition, multiculturalism is her comfort zone. At the age of 26, she flew to New York and travelled cross-country with her friend Fani to San Francisco. She received her degree in English Language and Literature from Sonoma State University and taught in California public high schools for years discovering young poets in her classroom. She loved being a part of the poet community in San Francisco Bay. Pandora's poetry has been published in "Healdsburg Haiku" by Running Wolf Press, in "The Peace Press" of Sonoma County, in "The Sitting Room" annual publication, in "A Word for All Seasons" Benicia Poets Anthology, and California Poets in the Schools Anthology. As a world traveller, she has experienced many countries, including Arctic Greenland, Hungary, Croatia, Guatemala, Morocco, Vietnam, India, Iran, Dubai, Denmark, the U.S. and Europe, but her favourite spot is the family summer cottage on the Aegean in northern Evia. She is the proud mother of her adult children, daughter Maya and son Alexander Sibley, and yiayia (grandmother) to babies Iris and Luna Gaertner.
Alizon Robertson is a retired Creative Writing tutor who writes in the genre of crime fiction and the ghost story. She has finally (after too many rewrites and edits to mention) finished her speculative thriller The Lantern Bearers and is about to embark on her next novel - Lost Boys: a story of a haunting.
Kalman Dean-Richards is a working class novelist and scriptwriter from the Black Country, England. His debut novel, Marco? was published in 2022. Buy the book here.
His first play, 'The Good Landlord' - a satire of the UK housing disaster, will tour London and the West Midlands in November 2025. Get yourself a ticket here."
Pam Garelick first came to Stoupa over thirty years ago and has lived and worked here for twenty three. She was a professional voice-over actor for many years, specialising in audiobooks. Most recently she was a food researcher /production assistant for an Australian film company and sold documentaries for them for ten years.
She has recently translated into English a book by Katerina Georgilea-Exarhoulea who is a Stoupa resident, about the relationship between the author Kazantzakis and his foreman at the lignite mine in Stoupa, Alexis Zorbas. The mine was here during the WWI. Katerina's grandfather was baptised by Zorbas and she has many stories and recollections. The events took place in Stoupa but the fictional book by Kazantzakis was set in Crete, his home island.
While Kazantzakis lived in Kalogria he had many luminaries come to visit him, including the famous poet, Sikleanos.
Theresa Stoker (Festival Organiser) has won competitions in various genres including theatre, short story and travel writing. Her travel pieces have appeared in the Telegraph Just Back travel section and been published in indie magazines. She is very proud of being part of Write Club The Podcast for 2 years and 100 episodes. In 2020 she was interviewed by French filmmaker Sonia Dauger for a documentary about author Marguerite Yourcenar for the ARTE TV channel.
Melanie Wicks (Festival Organiser) has lived in the Mani for over 20 years and during that time has played the violin in various local bands, started a local theatre group along with Theresa Stoker, and co-created the Mani Lit Fest with Theresa Stoker and Carol McGrath in 2018. She also designed and maintains this website for Mani LIt Fest.
Melanie is an aspiring writer and has so far produced a few short stories and is in the early stages of writing a novel set in Greece. Read her ghost story 'Miroloi' (set in the Mani) in our Lit Fest Library
Stephanie Rouse (host of Pedalo Peril)
Stephanie has an unshakeable belief in the limitless power of imagination and fancies herself a writer. The publishing world is yet to recognise her genius.
When she's not immersed in her Kindle or devouring cookery books she's planning her next adventure. Stephanie is bound to bring an entertaining twist to our festival as she takes charge of Pedalo Peril.
Pat Woolfe (host of Open Mic) is a retired English and drama teacher from Manchester, who now spends most of the year in Stoupa, where she lives with her husband Mike, and numerous cats.
She is one of the founder members of Write Club the Podcast, where she says she finally had the chance to develop some of the stories inspired by characters, situations, snippets of conversation she had been mentally filing away for future reference. Her previous literary efforts were often in response to the need to provide drama material for students, or members of the Youth Theatre she ran, and included several short plays. More recently, she has produced a number of short stories, often with just a hint of darkness, one of which won the 1st prize in the 2019 Mani Lit Fest Short Story competition.