Noted Greek novelist, short story writer to open UB’s Exhibit X Fiction Series

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The Exhibit X Fiction Series sponsored by the University at Buffalo Department of English will present a free public reading of “I’d Like,” the first translated work by award-winning Greek novelist and short story writer Amanda Michalopoulou at 7 p.m. on April 10 at Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave. There is free parking on site.

Michalopoulou is the author of six novels, three short story collections, and a successful series of children’s books. One of Greece’s leading contemporary writers, she has won the country’s highest literary awards, including the Revmata Prize, the Diavazo Award and the Prize of Athens Academy, and has been nominated to and won several U.S.-based awards as well.

“I’d Like” was nominated for the Best Translated Book Award (a BTBA) and won the International Literature Prize from the National Endowment for the Arts. It has been described by writer George Fragopoulos as a “metafictional work reminiscent of Calvino and Borges.”

“In all of Michalopoulou’s work, we are presented with a constellation of unusual stories, characterized as much by lyrical and hypnotic prose as by their movement between languages, peoples and places,” says Christina Milletti, associate professor of English at UB and the director of the Exhibit X series.

Because of her unerring cosmopolitanism, she says it’s no surprise that Michalopoulou has been described as “one of Greece's most innovative young story tellers.”

The Exhibit X Fiction Series invites an international guest to amplify their impressive roster of American writers. In 2012-13, the visitors were Lawrence Norfolk and Tom McCarthy, who shortly after his reading in Buffalo won Yale’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, which carries an award of $150,000.