The great poet took her last breath Olympia Karagiorga at the age of 90.

He was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt.

He studied at the American University of Cairo (AUC).

Then in California, USA, he studied at Stanford University, where until 1959, he studied English-American Literature and Creative Writing.

Later, he arrived in Athens where, among other things, he taught English for years at the American College for Women of Hellinikon, at the Moraitis School and at the American College of Palaio Psychiko and Kanzas.

In 1961 she published her first poetry collection entitled “Thousands of Fortune’s Faces”. In 2010 she was awarded by the Academy of Athens with the Lyrical Poetry Prize for the poetry collection Winter in Leros (Melani publications, 2009). In recent years, the poet lived in Leros.

Condolence message from the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni

Informed of the death of Olympia Karagiorga, the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni made the following statement:

The writer and poet Olympia Karagiorga was born “in Egypt, the homeland of her heart”, in a family where her father “was a lover of all genuine Greek”. He learned letters at the “Greek Schools” of Mansoura, a poetic city in its own right.

She completed her studies at Stanford University and returned to Greece, achieving a prominent position in the literary generation of the 60s.

She was a creator, passionate about everything she did: With the theater, close to the teacher Christos Vahliotis, for the spectacle and the theme of Nizisinski’s life – “Tall proud,… and he loved Eros dancing” – with Euripides, with the songs of Lorca, the poetry of Giorgos Sarandaris – “of the meloumenon” -, the love speech of Lawrence, Oscar Wilde, the absurdity of Camus as well as Virginia Woolf. Her large, sensitive, lyrical poetic work, with the invisible melancholy of unfulfilled loves, but also with redemption as an expectation of the future, was justly honored with the Lyrical Poetry Prize of the Academy of Athens in 2010.

Her life, a constant search. He returned and settled in their family mansion, in Leros:

Tonight

You will cover me with a white sheet

I will sleep

I bid her farewell with respect.

*Photo source: poets.gr