My Xanthi: A Los Galesburg Novella

Stephanie Cotsirilos

$15.00

Publication Date: December 1st, 2021

Publisher:

Los Galesburg Press

ISBN:

9780991603718

Pages:

175

Charter Books

On hand, as of Apr 27 1:07am

(Fiction - General)

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Description

A deeply personal story echoing global displacements, whether at the Mexican border, refugee camps, or in too-often ignored colonial American history, Stephanie Cotsirilos’ debut novella My Xanthi centers on a Greek immigrant woman whose wartime secrets teach a criminal defense lawyer about love’s triumph over injustice.

Released by a new, young, and diverse indie press devoted to the novella form, My Xanthi honors a literary tradition that produced Heart of Darkness, Passing, The Metamorphosis, and Goodbye, Columbus – full-fledged, concentrated, enduring tales delivered in compact volumes. My Xanthi takes an unflinching look at dislocation, assimilation, harsh resilience, coming of age, loss of innocence, and humanity’s flawed pursuit of justice.

Can justice be achieved? The reader will decide. Of one thing, the novella’s narrator is certain: Xanthi offered calloused hands, love, and laughter to salve what she did to survive – and sometimes, that was enough.

About the Author

Stephanie’s extended family’s roots in Greece, Peru, and Asia have shaped her journey as an author, lawyer, and performing artist.

The journey began in Chicago, where she was born. Though her first language was Greek, English followed rapidly. When she was five, and someone asked, “What’s your name, little girl?” she answered, “Judy Garland.” Her immigrant grandmothers were horrified.

She grew up, earned degrees in comparative literature and music from Brown and Yale, and went to New York for a career on and off Broadway – there creating the role of The Critic in the Tony Award-winning musical Nine, and writing songs and scripts produced at Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Writers Theatre, and other spaces.

To her family’s relief, Stephanie returned to Yale for a law degree and joined a New York firm. She and her late husband formed a family with Scottish, Greek, and Indigenous Peruvian ancestry. After his death, she moved with her small son to Maine.

She kept writing: legislative drafting, opinion pieces, strategic documents for nonprofits, poetry, fiction. As consultant and Interim Executive Director of Portland Ballet, she returned full circle to the arts and soon after, was accepted into The Writers Hotel conference in Manhattan, joining U.S. and international peers.

Stephanie is now author of the novella My Xanthi (Los Galesburg Press), essayist in the anthology of New England writers, Breaking Bread (Beacon Press), and was published finalist in Mississippi Review’s Prize in Fiction. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in numerous print and online venues including McSweeney’s, The New Guard, New Millennium Writings, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and various media. In 2021, she was awarded the Patrice Krant fellowship in residence at Storyknife’s inaugural retreat for women writers in Alaska.

Were they alive today, Stephanie’s grandmothers might look askance at her traveling thousands of miles to Alaska to write. It’s unlikely they could read anything she has written. Yet she hopes they would be secretly proud – not least because she doesn’t answer to “Judy Garland” anymore, but to the name of her lineage.