Mileva Anastasiadou: Living in Greek, Writing in English

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Alina is the author of several publications, including a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com. We discussed how Alina started writing creatively to bridge the gap between her Romanian and American identities, the self-censorship she feels as an immigrant writer and how her voice changes when switching between Romanian and English. 

Ana Maria Caballero is a Colombian-American literary artist whose work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She's the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Arts Writer Award, a Sevens Foundation Grant and has been a finalist for numerous other literary and arts prizes. We discussed how her themes and writing style have evolved with each language, the growing presence of digital and crypto poetry, and her use of AI in poetry and art, highlighting the different interpretations of prose and poetry, in Spanish and English. 

Caballero is the author of Mammal (forthcoming via Steel Tool Books, 2024); Cortadas (forthcoming from S/W Ediciones, 2025); A Petit Mal (Black Spring Press, 2023); Tryst (Alexandria Publishing, 2022); mid-life (Finishing Line Press, 2016); Reverse Commute (Silver Birch Press, 2014); Entre domingo y domingo (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2023 and 2014).  

She lives in Madrid with her husband and children. 

Alison Mooney is a poet, storyteller and dancer who has lived in France, the US, Ireland, Germany, and now lives in Brussels.  For many years she worked across Europe in the private sector, before joining the European Parliament 10 years ago. In 2020, Alison won the Cicero Speechwriting Award, from the US Professional Speechwriters Association, for a poetic motivational speech. In 2022, she was appointed speechwriter to the President of the European Parliament. In 2023, Alison self-published a collection of multilingual poetry: Balance – in mind, in body, in soul. The first edition was sold out within weeks and Alison has been giving poetry readings in Brussels, Dublin, Connemara, and France.

Her multilingual poetry collection is a journey on a tight-rope in search of balance: in mind, in body, in soul. Accompanyied by photography from award-winning photographer Sean Hayes, Alison Mooney’s book is graphically built like an art triptych. On one side, poems of grief, on the other poems of healing and suspended in the centre a speech on finding balance. 

You can listen to Alison's prize-winning motivational speech here.

Here, you can listen to Alison reading her poem Beyond You, from her collection. 

Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: one novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in over one hundred publications, including The Saturday Evening Post and the Los Angeles Times. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Shakespeare Award, the Short Story America Prize, the New England Book Festival Award, the Los Angeles Book Festival Prize, and the Paris Book Festival Prize. 

We discussed how he decided to write children's books in Spanish, what makes him feel like a Frenchman in America and an American in France, and how strange and elating it is for him when people pronounce his name correctly.

Feel free to connect with him on social media @writesfromla or at mathieucailler.com. 

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist from Athens, Greece, and the author of We Fade with Time, a flash fiction collection published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fiction nominated writer, Mileva's work can be found in many journals, such as The Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, The Bureau Dispatch, and others. We discussed how Mileva's Greek publisher encouraged her to switch languages, how hard writing in English felt in the beginning, but also how it turned out to be a unique way she could look at her life and dissect her experience. In this episode Mileva reads He Used to Be Gold, first published in Bending Genres, Issue Sixteen, August 2020.