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At what age do children start to think about death? When do they ask their first questions? Can a book influence children’s attitude and approach to such important issues? And if so, how?Two questions from the excellent interview given by Alexia Vernikou to elniplex.com and Aneza Kolomvou on the occasion of the publication of the fairy tale ‘Up to the Sky and Back’ (illustrated by Sofia Touliatou).You can read it below: What drew you to writing? What was the experience like? Ever since I was little, I’ve enjoyed writing down my thoughts, both real and imaginary, so this book came as a natural progression. As an experience, it was enjoyable, painless, therapeutic and very creative. What is your favourite book or author? If I had to pick one book, it would be Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, which I have read over and over again at various stages of my life. I’ve just finished Hanya Yanagihara’s *A Little Life*, though, which I found absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t put it down, and despite its length, I didn’t want it to end. In your first book, you tackle a sensitive and unique subject: death. How did you come to choose such a subject? Death and loss are subjects that affect me both personally and professionally. Personally, because they are so difficult and painful; professionally, because the questions parents ask me on this subject are almost a daily occurrence. Questions their children ask them, which they find difficult to answer. At this tender age of 4–5 years, is it right to confront children with the most unpleasant aspects of life? Children have already encountered death through their fairy tales and games, and questions about it have usually already begun. Snow White and Cinderella, games involving weapons, battles and killings start very early on and are part of their lives. The difference with children of these ages is that they do not understand the finality of death or the pain that follows. So they can cope with the subject, and it is not as distressing for them as it is for us adults.At what age do children start to think about death? When do they ask their first questions? As early as three years old, many children start asking questions about death. When do we die? Why do we die? Will you die too, Mummy? Will I die too? Where has Grandad gone now that he’s died? If I eat all my fish, will I live forever? These are just a few of the questions they have and the queries they ask. Direct and honest questions that require equally direct and honest answers. Can a book influence children’s attitudes and approach to such important issues? And if so, how? Certainly it can, because children of this age learn through books. They identify with the characters and use them as examples and points of reference in their own lives. The aim of this book is for children to understand that death happens to adults after many years, once they have grown old and their hearts have stopped beating. And when someone dies, we can no longer hug them, but we can keep them forever in our thoughts and our hearts as our most precious treasure. In fairy tales, death often claims the wicked… whilst the good escape it or are resurrected… If only it were like that in real life… The phrase ‘… he became a star in the sky and is watching over us from up there’ is now widely used to avoid causing trauma to a child’s soul. Does this have any long-term consequences? When talking to children about death, it is important to focus on the cessation of bodily functions; in other words, we die because the heart stops beating. That is as far as the body is concerned. As for the soul and the metaphysical explanations we wish to offer—‘the little star in the sky’—this can be used to provide comfort provided the parent believes in it and explains to the child the difference between body and soul. However, we cannot stop there, because there will be many questions and we won’t be able to avoid them… In your experience, do Greek parents visit a specialist psychologist in the event of the loss of a loved one or for any other problems they observe in their children, or do they avoid doing so? As with all issues they face with their children, some parents choose to seek a psychologist’s opinion, whilst others refuse. In this particular case, it would be advisable for them to do so, because children perceive death differently from us; they grieve in their own way and come to terms with their loss at various stages of their lives, giving it new meaning.Recently, teachers have been dealing with an ever-increasing number of children with speech and behavioural problems. Or have they ‘put the children under the microscope’, as is often said? What have you noticed? Do you agree with this view? And if so, what do you think is causing this increase? Unfortunately, it is something I have noticed too when I compare the children I used to meet in my work 10 years ago with the children I meet today. I believe it is due to both biological and environmental factors. The environment and the family can be worked on, improved and developed if there is a willingness to do so. Then we see striking changes in the child’s behaviour as well. Clearly, the stress and insecurity brought on by the economic crisis, anger, the prevailing competition, the lack of boundaries and the influences from the internet have certainly played their part. At the same time, there is the ‘microscope’, and here we need to be careful about who we address and why. What do we do about childhood anxiety? When does it cease to be creative? I would not want to characterise childhood anxiety as creative. Clearly, like all emotions, it is permissible, but it is not pleasant and often becomes an obstacle to our children’s daily lives and functioning. In this age of rapid and multifaceted information and development, everyone is rushing to cover ground and fill gaps. Today, what are the essentials of child-rearing that we need to address in order to raise healthy, well-rounded and responsible individuals? I would say that the most important thing is to raise resilient children. Children who can cope with and respond to these fast-paced and demanding times and the constant flow of information. To achieve this and foster healthy personalities, we need to spend time with our children, listen to what they tell us, set boundaries, stick to them, and tell them the truth. What would you suggest to parents as a creative way to engage their children? I would suggest that every parent finds something they enjoy doing with their children and does it. Whatever that may be… painting, cooking, going for a walk, reading books, cycling. Only if they’re having a good time will their child enjoy it too, and they’ll manage to make it part of their relationship and routine. Is writing books one of your next goals? Of course! I have plenty of ideas, both for children’s books and for a book for parents, always with the child as the theme!

Thanos Stathopoulos talks to Lina Rokou on Popaganda about *The Hour*, his latest book. You can read the interview below: *The Hour* as a title. Why? And what role does time play in your writing? Book titles always elude me. I would say, however: Time at the heart of things. The time at which things happen. It is the moment or the duration. Every hour. The flow of time. The present and the past. Now or then. (When?) It is what we tear away and what tears us away. It is the merging. Time and the spiritual centre – a deep, concentrated feeling. All writing is connected to time. In my own writing, the tyranny of time is perhaps excessive. What is your earliest memory? Sitting on a little chair with a toy. Perhaps in 1965, I don’t know. A memory of myself, that is. Like a photograph. This connects me to something in the book: ‘And then the question returns: what is art? And art is what an artist does: sitting in a chair in his studio’. What is the artist’s studio? Life? Memory? Imagination? None of these? The connection takes me by surprise. You’re referring to a passage from a text by Bruce Nauman, which I quote in the book. The artist’s studio is an open field of action: it contains everything. I would say that its existence is of paramount importance. Everything happens there. By ‘studio’, of course, we must mean an expanded state. A space that extends. A spiritual state, certainly. This, after all, is the central theme of the book: space as a studio. Not just the artist’s, but everyone’s. The poetics of space and human expression. Everything can serve as material for processing. Everything you mention is raw material, but it does not constitute the artist’s workshop. The studio is the personal space the artist constructs and the intellectual atmosphere they need in order to exist. And beyond the intellectual space? What about space in its realistic dimension? Where do you prefer to write? Where do you imagine yourself writing? What is the most unusual place you have written in or found yourself writing in? I always write in my studio – the space where I live and work. I have rarely written anywhere else. I often take notes in cafés, which I then immediately transfer to my computer to edit. I’ve never imagined writing anywhere. Under the right circumstances, of course, I could write anywhere. The writing process involves a lot of work, anxiety and tension. You want to write. You wake up in the morning and write, or try to write. Sometimes you manage it, sometimes you don’t. Probably, most of the time you don’t. But you have to persevere. I can’t recall any paradoxical passage I’ve written; obviously, there isn’t one. The only paradox lies in the nature of what I write. What is paradoxical to you? Anything that clashes with common sense.Is ‘The Hour’ a puzzle of time, events, dreams, desires, thoughts, repressed feelings, influences? What is ‘The Hour’? If we exclude the repressed feelings, it is everything you mention. And more. It is a puzzle. Traces, fragments, readings, annotations, quotations. It can be read as a fragmentary text, interpreted as a dream or as a feeling. You hover in space and time. There are the other texts—that is, the borrowed texts—which I present either on their own or by commenting on them, in which I participate. They are the events and details from the lives of others. They are memory, of course. A personal archive of events concerning the poetics of space and the psychological centre, with a nod to what we call ‘architectural or architectured space’, where the body, actions and human expression take centre stage. It is the personal space we construct and the way we exist within it. In other words, what I mentioned earlier regarding the concept of the workshop. How and to what extent does your writing style resemble or differ from your way of life? The way I write embodies the way I live to the same extent that it eludes it. I don’t know if it could be any other way. I am not referring solely to the fragmentary and disjointed nature of what I write. The autobiographical elements in my texts often dictate the style: emphatic, declarative, revealing. Someone who knows me might recognise me by reading my work. Literature, however, is a space where everything acquires meaning through metaphor. The statement functions simultaneously as a metaphor. Readings, references and quotations are indirect experiences. My way of life can sometimes be channelled into my references to artists and writers from whom I quote passages, either from their work or from their lives: a mediated biography, one might say. We are always the others as well.A quote from a favourite writer or artist that expresses better than any other how you feel about writing? ‘I asked her if there was any way I could eat a wild carrot from time to time. ‘A wild carrot!’ she cried, as if I’d expressed a desire to taste a Jewish baby. I told her that the season for wild carrots was coming to an end and that, if until then she could give me only wild carrots to eat, I’d be grateful. ‘Only wild carrots!’ she cried. Wild carrots have a violet flavour, to me. I like wild carrots because they have a violet flavour, and violets because they have the scent of wild carrots. If there were no wild carrots on earth, I wouldn’t love violets, and if there were no violets, wild carrots would be just as uninteresting to me as turnips or radishes. But even in their present state of flora, I mean in this world where wild carrots and violets find a way to coexist, I could very easily do without them.” Samuel Beckett, First Love, trans. Achilleas Alexandrou. Has a woman ever fallen in love with you because of something you wrote? What was it? As far as I know, no. A quote from a favourite writer or artist who expresses better than anyone else how you feel about love? Oh, what can I say… There are many. Each one expresses a truth. I could, however, mention Baudelaire’s text *Consolations on Love*. Among many other aphorisms: ‘One must therefore choose one’s loves. – Beware of the moon and the stars, beware of the Venus of Milos, of lakes, guitars, rope ladders and all novels. – But love the one you love deeply, steadfastly, boldly, fiercely; let your love, having grasped the meaning of harmony, not torment the love of another. – Because every woman is a fragment of the essential woman, because love is the only thing for which it is worth composing a sonnet and donning fine lingerie. I don’t know if it expresses how I feel about love better than any other, but it is a text I have come to love very much. What do you love about everyday life and what can’t you stand about it? I like taking long walks around the city: walking, observing people and the city’s landmarks. I really like cafés – I’ve been a regular at cafés for over thirty years. It’s like a ritual. I like meeting friends there or sitting on my own. I like the quiet hours of the afternoon in my studio. Those are the hours when I can concentrate completely. I always read every afternoon. I like to have a few drinks in the evening. Often I can’t stand my daily routine – it always happens when I’m not feeling well. I can’t stand anything that’s compulsory. I can’t stand it, so to speak, as long as I’m forced to endure the day’s constraints. 

The Athenian artist recounts his life to LIFO and Yannis Pantazopoulos on the occasion of the publication of his book *At the Bottom of Dreams*—Images from Andreas Embeirikos’s Octana, as well as his exhibition at the Zoumboulakis Gallery (open until Saturday 31 March). You can read an excerpt below: Photo: Paris Tavitian/LIFO I was born in Athens in 1945. Our family home was at number 23 Ypsilantou Street in Kolonaki. This large house, which has now been demolished, was a paradise of childhood adventure and exploration, full of dark corners, hidden spaces and a large, winding wooden staircase connecting the floors. It was a staircase where, at every turn, strange sounds, whispers, anxieties and fears from our childhood imaginations lurked. I grew up with parents who loved poetry and literature dearly. They had a natural affinity for the arts, and all that richness was passed on to us, without ever being imposed on us as an obligation. My mother was a teacher and my father a lawyer. So, our home was a place of ideas and reading was a matter of course. From my early secondary school years, I had made it clear what I would do in life and what I would pursue. Perhaps it is an inexplicable instinct that leads you to ‘something’. I studied printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts and then painting on a German government scholarship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. However, I believe that talent only exists through hard work. One may possess the raw power that guides one towards the bigger picture, but in order for this to become conscious, a framework, an environment and a culture are needed. During my childhood and teenage years, I travelled extensively in Germany. Memories of many childhood summers are linked to that country. I had experiences that connected me to a civilisation and a culture that helped shape my identity. Later, from 1977 to 1986, I lived in Berlin, whilst until 1992 I lived and worked in Brussels.Ypsilantou Street, in its extension, connected the ‘cultured’ Kolonaki with the magical, fairy-tale world of Evangelismos Park, where, amidst the green flowerbeds and statues, Vasilis, the photographer. A beloved guardian of black-and-white memories, surrounded by photographs, negatives and posed shots on painted backdrops or against a flower-filled backdrop for the secret romances of conscripts on leave with the maids from the neighbouring houses.The balconies of our house looked out directly onto the British Embassy and its gardens. In the summers, we watched from above the open-air receptions, the arrivals of dignitaries in their evening gowns and tailcoats amongst the palm trees, like scenes from the mythical sequences of the first colour films. For years we believed that the British ambassador was none other than the dapper man in the gold uniform. Much later it was revealed to us that, despite all his pomp, he was merely a driver, and the real ambassador was the seemingly insignificant, grey little man who accompanied him. It was a discrepancy that proved significant for my subsequent understanding of the world. And this became most apparent during my school years, when, from a tender age, I had become involved in a romantic relationship with the young daughter of the embassy driver, who also lived in the staff quarters.The revelation of the true roles and identities of the individuals brought us down to earth with a bump, into a reality where, through the harshness of romantic rejection, we learnt relatively early on the complex relationship between being and appearing, between the obvious and the obscured truth of the world, between overt and covert social power. In the corner of our house, Ypsilantou and Loukianou, in the square by the British Embassy, our political consciousness first awoke when, overnight, the lower section of Loukianou Street suddenly changed its name and was renamed Karaoli-Dimitriou. Further up, next to the little dairy in Lykovrysi, on the upper side of Kolonaki Square, stood the mysterious figure of an elderly man who sat, come winter or summer, on a small wooden box. He sold precious treasures from our childhood reading world, such as second-hand issues of ‘Little Heroes’. This legendary man reminded me of a work by Magritte: a seated male figure wearing a hat, through the open collar of which you can see, in place of his body, a cage with a bird. Read the rest here.

Lina Rokou, on the occasion of the publication of her first novel, The End of Hunger, gave a very interesting interview to Womantoc.gr and Efi Alevizou. You can read it below: Lina has vibrant, red hair and a lively writing style. She tackles many things. From poetry to city reporting and from interviews to the latest trends. She is what – for the sake of brevity – we would describe as a ‘child of her time’. A time that is strange and edgy, cheerful and gloomy. An era that is changing rapidly, with new existential questions springing up to join the list of those already unanswered and fundamental: How do you deconstruct the other to reach their core? Can you buy their wisdom, and at what price? Could a lollipop serve as payment? Her first book, The End of Hunger, may well hold all the answers. If, of course, such answers exist at all.-What is the story of The End of Hunger? A strange series of transactions begins between the unemployed Emma and the junk dealer San when the former sells the latter her organs and body parts, whilst the shadow of an old love falls over the relationship that develops. How are the body, reason and emotion deconstructed when we give ourselves to someone? Is there a price to pay for the joy of love? How do we pay it back? I would describe it as a next-door story with strong doses of paranoid romanticism.-Give me a summary of your story. Where are you from and where are you going? I grew up in Corfu until I was 19. My parents live there, so I go back often. My relationship with Corfu has shaped me more than anything else in my life. For me, Corfu is a living organism; it nourishes me, it torments me, it heals me. But it’s better from a distance. Relationships that intense don’t last long in everyday life. I love Pagrati and Mets. I don’t think I could live anywhere else in Athens. I work at Popaganda, I’m out and about in the city a lot, I try to make the most of what it has to offer. I have no idea where I’m going. I’m interested in the present; I reflect on the past but don’t feel nostalgic for it; I think about the future but recognise that I can’t predetermine it—perhaps only build it, and even that only to a certain extent.-You’re a prolific journalist. What does writing mean to you? As a journalist, writing is my job. A job I chose and love. It’s torture, I think, to do something professionally that you don’t like, because just think how many hours a day we work. I almost liken doing a job I don’t fancy to sleeping with a man I don’t desire.-How difficult is it for someone to write a book? What else, apart from writing ability, is required? I don’t know if it’s easy or difficult, generally speaking. For me, the easiest part was the writing itself, and the most demanding part was the editing and proofreading. I read the book countless times, editing, changing, tweaking. I was mainly preoccupied with the ‘editing’, by which I mean that the whole story wasn’t written in a linear fashion. I proceeded using both my logic and my instinct. There were, however, chapters that were written in one go and I hardly touched them at all. I think it requires dedication. You have to be preoccupied with writing your book not only when you’re actually writing it, but also during the rest of the day. In a way, the book becomes an integral part of you; you can’t get it out of your head. Credit: Dimitris Koulelis – Name three books of contemporary literature that have left you speechless.‘Bring Me Maria Kensora’s Head’, the collection of short stories by Panos Tsirou that gives me palpitations every time I read it. ‘Amberludachamin’, a long poem by Samson Raka, the most important poet of our generation. Thirdly, ‘Fin’s Hair’ by Eva Stefanis, for the raw paradox it exudes. – How many hours a day did you work on your book, and how long did it take you to finish it? There was no set schedule. There were days when I didn’t write anything (but I was constantly thinking about it) and others when I spent hours, with the necessary breaks, in front of the screen. I started writing in March 2014 and finished the first draft in August 2014. However, I picked it up again and worked on it intensively from August 2015 until October of the same year. And once more, in early 2017, when I actually changed the ending. Thankfully! – A line from your book that means a lot to you.‘Desire undermines my human existence. I love daisies and hedgehogs. When you come near me, I’ll growl at you. Don’t be afraid. It’s my nature.’ Read the first few pages of the book here.