FAMOUS CONTEMPORARY GREEK-AMERICAN AUTHORS

Contemporary Greek-American authors write about various topics but they always refer to Greece.

 

Some authors of Greek descent can be found in bookstores and libraries across the world and they have beautiful styles and send distinct messages.

 

Five of the most famous are:

 

                                               JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Jeffrey Eugenides is a Pulitzer Prize winner.  His writing style is wonderful and his books cover topics like teenage mental health, immigration, and the decline of the American City.

 

His first novel, “The Virgin Suicide” published in 1993 was turned into a film of the same name.  His second book “Middlesex” was published in 2002 and earned him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 2005.

 

Middlesex pays homage to the author’s Greek ancestry following the life of an intersex  man of Greek descent in Detroit. 

 

The first half of the book, however, has a different focus instead of following the early lives of the main character's grandparents who were forced to flee from Asia Minor during the burning of Smyrna.

 

His third novel is titled “The Marriage Plot”, where the author acknowledges his Greek descent in the novel by describing the life of a Greek man from Detroit.

 

 

                                                 PANIO YIANOPOULOS

Panio Yianopoulos is a Greek-American  author born and raised in Massachusetts.  Yianopoulos who is both an author and a book editor has so far published two  books “A Familial Beast” and “How to Break Into our House and Where to Keep the Money”.

 

His first novel, “A Familiar Beast” was an Amazon’s best book of the month and was number one Indie bookseller.  His book is about a man called Marcus who watches his life fall apart and accepts an invitation to meet an old classmate from high school named Edgar who is busy with his own demons. The pair plans a deer  hunt which prompts Marcus to reevaluate his life.

 

His second book is a collection of nine short stories about love, dating named “How to Break Into our House and Where to Keep the Money”.  Although Yianopoulos is a successful author and editor on his own he is also well known because of his wife actress Moley Ringwald.  Their children have all Greek middle names clearly showing his Greek descent.

 

 

                                                   GEORGE PELEKANOS

Pelekanos is a productive Greek-American author, having written more than 20 books and screenplays.  Born in Washington DC, Pelecanos often includes part of his heritage into his work which mostly falls into the genre of detective fiction. A lot of Pelekanos’ early work revolves around a Greek Washington DC detective named Nick Stephanos.  But Pelekanos chose to expand his work and began to write in the third person including new characters like a crime fighter called Dimitris Karras. 

 

On top of his twenty novels, Pelekanos is also a screenwriter and producer frequently collaborating with David Simon, a director and television writer.  Pelekanos has written multiple episodes of Simon’s Hbf series “The Wire”.  Over the course of his long, successful career he has also a long list of distinctions, including a Writers’ Guild of America Award for “Outstanding Dramatic Series”.

 

 

                                               ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON

Adrianna Huffington’s surname must seem familiar because she is one of the co-founders of the new media giant and former editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post.  She is also the author of multiple best-selling books and many of her 15 credited titles evoke Greek themes.

 

Some of her non-fiction novels include “Maria Callas – The Woman Behind the Legend” and “The Gods of Greece”.  Huffington was born in Greece, before moving to the UK, at the age of 16, and attending th University of Cambridge studying economics.  Huffington is most certainly the most influential Greek woman in media. She has now moved from Huffington Post which she has sold to “BuzzFeed” and she has started a new business which provides behaviour change technology called “Thrive Globe”.  Her latest book is “Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder.

 

 

                                               HARRY MARK PETRAKIS  

Harry Mark Petrakis was born in Missouri, the son of Greek immigrants to the United States.  His Greek name was Charalambos and he had along and successful career before passing away in February 2021.

 

Many of Petrakis’ books are about the residents of Chicago’s Greek Town, where he personally grew up. He produced works regularly as recently as 2015 and has a very varied bibliography, having written fiction, short story anthology, and non-fiction books. His final book was an autobiography titled “Song of my Life”, which was published when the author was 91-years-old.

 

In 1960, he became an international success with publishing his novel “A Dream of Kings” which earned him a nomination for the National Book Award for a second year in a row.  “A Dream of Kings” was on the New York Times’ Best Seller list for 12 weeks, translated into 12 languages and made a Hollywood film with the same title.