Maria A. Ioannou

Maria A. Ioannou was born in Limassol in 1982. She has published three collections of short stories: The Giant Fall of an Eyelash (Gavriilidis Publications, 2011 – Cyprus State Prize for New Writer), Cauldron (Nefeli Publications, 2015 – shortlisted for the Klepsydra Magazine Young Writer Award), and The Intermediates (Nefeli Publications, 2022 – Cyprus State Prize for Short Story/Novella, shortlisted in the Prose category for the Chartis Magazine Awards). She has also written two books for children: The Fly and the Jug (illustrated by Philippos Theodorides, Patakis Publications, 2019) and My Mom Is an Astronaut (illustrated by Vasilis Koutsogiannis, Teleia Publications, 2023). She studied English literature at Reading and completed her Master’s thesis and PhD on 20th-century literature and creative writing at King’s College London and the University of Winchester, respectively. Her micro-fiction stories were nominated for Best Small Fictions 2020 in the US and Best of the Net 2021. In 2013, she founded the international interdisciplinary literature festival "Sardam."