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Gra-Grou, the atmospheric graphic novel by Tassos Zafeiradis, Yannis Palavos and Thanasis Petrou, with music by Michalis Siganidis, was the big winner at the 2018 Greek Comics Awards, taking home two major prizes: ‘Best Comic’ and ‘Best Script’!The awards ceremony took place on Friday 20 April in the amphitheatre of the French Institute of Athens, as part of Comicdom Con Athens 2018, Greece’s biggest celebration of comics. The evening was hosted by the ‘Stenos Korse’ team.The book, now in its second edition, continues to receive rave reviews from readers and critics alike. Set against the backdrop of the eponymous restaurant, a landmark in Northern Greece for an entire era, Gra-Grou crafts a charming gallery of characters just before each of them chooses the ‘big Yes or the big No’. The publication includes original music composed by Michalis Siganidis, available via a QR code.Many thanks to the creators of Gra-Grou for entrusting Ikaros Publications with its publication, and to the Academy for singling it out!

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 exhibition ‘Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Gikas. Painting for Books’ will open on Wednesday 18 April at the Gikas Gallery of the Benaki Museum, as part of the events for ‘Athens – World Book Capital 2018’. ‘...Our gatherings at Ikaros were once interrupted, towards the end, our dear Alekos Patsifas, and then Katsimbalis would drag us off to a table at Zonar, where we would drink the nectar provided by Nikos Karidis’s bookshop,” writes N. Hatzikyriakos-Gikas in his piece on the 50th anniversary of Ikaros.The books illustrated by the great painter are now classics and reflect the relationships between the creators, as well as the atmosphere of that era. Nikos Hatzikyriakos – Gikas was systematically involved in illustrating texts from 1937 to 1992. He produced book covers, frontispieces and illustrations, mainly for works of poetry. Literary magazines such as ‘Nea Estia’, "Morphes" and "Aixoni" were published with works by Gikas as their cover or frontispiece, whilst he fully illustrated "The Poems of Cavafy", Kazantzakis’s "The Odyssey", Loggos’s *Daphne and Chloe*, and Nikos Gatsos’s *Amorgos*. Added to these are many individual covers and frontispieces for books and poetry collections, such as those by Odysseas Elytis, Lito Katakouzino, Margarita Lyberaki and others. The exhibition offers the public the opportunity to engage with both painting and literature, whilst also providing an opportunity to study older editions and discover the rich body of illustrative work by the great Greek painter, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika. Curated by: Ioanna Moraiti Exhibition design: Pavlos Thanopoulos Exhibition dates: 19/04/2018 – 21/07/2018 Gika Gallery | 3 Kriezotou Street, 106 71 Athens Further information at http://bit.ly/2pQnMRU