Dido Sotiriou (1909–2004)

Dido Sotiriou was born into a vastly wealthy, multi-lingual family in western Anatolia that later went bankrupt. In 1919, the family moved to Smyrni (Izmir) but following the upheavals of the Greek-Turkish War of 1922, they fled to Piraeus. Dido went to live with an aunt and uncle in Athens, where she was educated at the French Institute before studying at the Sorbonne, Paris. She began her career as a journalist in 1936 and worked as the editor-in-chief of a women's magazine, Gynaika (Woman), as well as a foreign policy commentator for various newspapers. During the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II, she joined the Communist Party and wrote for its newspaper Rizopastis (Revolution); she was named editor in 1944. In 1945, she took part in the founding congress of the Women’s International Democratic Federation.
Travelling again to Paris in the 1950s, she met writers such as as André Malraux, André Gide, and Louis Aragon. She published her first novel Oi Nekroi Perimenoyn (The Dead Await) in 1959, and was the author of numerous prose and theatrical works. IHer most famous book, Ματωμένα Χώματα or Bloody Earth (English title: Farewell Anatolia), published in 1962, confronts the trauma of the expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor that she had experienced. The Dido Sotiriou Cultural Prize of the Hellenic Authors' Society was named in her honor.