In the small town of Karlovasi on the island of Samos, for two weeks, eight writers from North America found escape from their daily routines. They studied writing, they wrote, and as they traversed the island, they experienced the culture, the history, the arts. To quote the words of the great poet, Yiannis Ritsos, who gazed over the Aegean waters contemplating from his special spot on the beach... I know that each one of us travels to love alone, in the small town of Karlovasi on the island of Samos, for two weeks, eight writers from North America found escape from their daily outines. They studied writing, they wrote, and as they traversed the island, they experienced the culture, the history, the arts. To quote the words of the great poet, Yiannis Ritsos, who gazed over the Aegean waters contemplating from his special spot on the beach...

I know that each one of us travels to love alone,
alone to faith and to death.
I know it. I've tried you. It doesn't help.
Let me come with you.
from "Moonlight Sonata" (translation by Peter Green and Beverly Bardsley).
Together, yet alone, this small group of writers shares the solace they found with Odyssey readers as they relate how they literary odyssey led them to Greece.

Demetra Angelis-Foustanellas
The making of our workshop transpired on two continents. Penny, my friend and literary agent from Canada suggested the idea upon a visit to our hotel. Through her, I came to meet Rosemary, our dynamic instructor. Thus, our long-distance venture began.
We worked hard from both sides of the Atlantic to make our dream come true: a writers’ workshop on a Greek island in the Aegean, on the island of Pythagoras, Samos. For years, my husband Diamantis and I envisioned adding a creative touch to our hospitality business.
I set out to meet Rosemary and each of my future classmates, at the Aristarchos airport, near Pythagorio. I observed the arrivals, spotting my guests who emerged out of the crowd with books and smiles.
We traversed the winding roads back to Karlovasi in conversation, stopping occasionally to take photographs. I yearned to show these guests my Greece, the nirvana of endless mystery, its historical menagerie of tears & laughter, a fusion of hot & cold. A country where a symphony of wallows
chirps in unison on tiled roof-tops, where stray cats screech in narrow alleys, where the sunset dissolves into the horizon, where tranquility is drowned by impassioned conversations. In Greece the intoxicating fragrance of the jasmine, the rhythmic chimes of church bells, the lulling staccato of the cicadas and the quiet trickle of a running brook entertain us.
Hellas, my Greece, is a melting pot of ideas, beliefs, ambitions & disasters, lined with an array of bursting colors & emotions. It is a subtle transition from an Aristophanes comedy to a Sophocles tragedy, a grand synthesis of history & knowledge. How can the stranger possibly know that beneath this beautiful disguise, lie the open wounds of a crippled matriarch who stands invincible, while her children suffer.

This kaleidoscope of emotions is the country of my ancestors.
I look at my fellow writers and want to share it all.
In exchange, our tireless mentor Rosemary and my wonderful company of fellow classmates nourish my mind, my memory. They return me to my childhood, to my adolescence and remind me of forgotten phrases. They tell me of the changes and experiences I’ve left behind.
Their presence renews the reality that I am bicultural, somewhere in the middle, neither here nor there, yet both places at once, for I was born to immigrant parents, far in the diaspora, and although raised faithfully by Hellenic doctrine, Canada is my place of birth and where I spent the first three decades of my life. I miss it.
Philia, the only non-Canadian among us lives in Wisconsin but she was born in Athens which makes her a genuine Greek, a free spirit, like my husband. Together, they are wind & fire and breathe life into my commentaries, energizing the already magical ambiance.
My stories are all inspired by Hellenism and aimed at preserving moments that fade with time. Perhaps my new friends will now understand why. Jackie, Roxy, Kat, Heather, Kevin, Ellie, Philia, and Rosemary. Efharisto.

Jackie Flanagan
Why Greece, and why writing in Greece?
The obvious answer: Greece is the birthplace of Western civilization and the source of the myths, epics, comedies and tragedies that underpin our sense of who we are, the forces that drive us and our place in the universe: stories of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Athena,
Aphrodite, Hestia, Demeter, Hermes; the great epics of the Iliad and Odyssey, the dramas about Oedipus, Antigone, IphigeniaLysistrata; not to mention the enduring philosophical insights of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates.
More contemporary works such as Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek contrast the uptight correct Englishman with the lively Zorba. We Canadians are aware of something perhaps lacking in ourselves: a certain devil-may-care abandon. And sunnyness, which we seek in the Greek islands. The relaxed Mediterranean temperament, the love of good food and wine– fine olive oil from the grey-leaved olive trees, feta from the goats still grazing these isles–are a far cry from our fastpaced, work-filled, prepackaged lives back home.
Samos has none of the familiar distractions. No excuse not to write.
We’re here with others equally dedicated to writing–and critiquing each other’s work. We’re jolted out of complacency, out of routine, awakened by the wash of the tide over pebbled beaches, the pink oleander’s perfume.
However, no matter how exquisite the setting–how blue the sea, how golden the sunshine–the real inspiration in a workshop like ours is the teacher, our lovely Rosemary Nixon. She opens our creativity with her imaginative assignments; she inspires us with her dedication to language, the craft, the resonance behind the words; she encourages us with her supportive but honest comments. All writing is writing about what you know–what you really know from your own lived experience– so we write our families, our parents, our childhoods.
We are here in Greece, but our imaginations thread back to the prairies of our childhood and the Zeus and Hera who headed our own dinner tables. We write about our ideal house, a walk we’ve taken, a bear, a river, a door, a key, a cup on the ground, discovering that these passages reveal our selves, our approach to life, how we deal with trouble, whether we seize opportunities, how we feel about sex–and love. To be honest, we could do these exercises anywhere. But they wouldn’t resonate in quite the same way as they do here in Greece, land of frothing sea foam and dancing breezes, where the love of art was born.

Kevin Heinrichs
The twin-prop to Samos dipped its wings in a final low arc to face the wind; you could fit on a postcard what I knew of Greece.
The Acropolis. Homer. Greek salad.
It’s not that this prairie boy from Canada wasn’t taught his history. But bits of Grade 9 lessons on Socrates have jumbled with university classes on democracy, like an ill-fitted puzzle from different boxes.
I didn’t venture to Europe in my twenties with my college friends, Canadian flags bobbing on their backpacks. Instead, I spent winters studying and summers working: planting trees in British Columbia, mowing grass in Manitoba, teaching canoeing in the icy waters of the North.
I became a news writer, then editor, banging out copy on deadline for newsletters, newspapers, magazines.
So why travel 10,000 kilometers to Greece to learn a craft I already made a living at?
To see if the rippling blue beckoning from a lifetime of glanced-at tourism posters could really hold the allure in person. To see if the peace it promised could carve a space inside this deadline-driven mind. To work with other writers honing a deeper kind of writing, to find the voice that is hardest to find–my own.
Over two weeks on the Greek island of Samos, I found a palette fuller than any brochure.
I floated in the azure of the ancient Aegean – so unlike the dark freshwater lakes of home. I watched the misted horizon from the mountaintop village of Kosmadei where sapphire sky and aqua sea meet without border. I spied a bone-white mare, standing in a field of auburn gold.
I toasted the sunset each night with new friends over dinner by the lapping shore, while the sky deepened around us: sapphire, amethyst, charcoal.
I ran at dawn past wild poppies, fluttering red on a stony ridge.
I walked the town square of Karlovasi, mottled grey marble cool and ancient beneath my feet. I sipped frappe of dark umber as a girl on a bicycle breezed past.
From oak barrels, I sampled Samian wine: nectars of amber, honey, and deep ruby.
I wandered past faded blue doors, pine emerging from its peeling edges, facing the hillside of its origin.
I drank, from cupped hands, the spring water flowing from Mt. Kerkis’s side.
Around this Karlovasi street corner, the slink of a stained feline. By the shore, the rage of a hot wind turns pale blue to foaming white.
If the initial allure of the island of Samos was its physical beauty in endless hues, the deeper attraction, like an aging lover, lies in its endless capacity to surprise.