Hybridia

Episode 13: “Where the Mountain Flows into the Sea” w/ paparouna

Our guest today is paparouna. They are a queer non-binary disabled storyweaver, worldbuilder, writer, translator, and educator, born and raised in Athens, Greece and currently living in occupied Arapahoe and Cheyenne territory in so-called Colorado, USA. They are a soon-to-be graduate of Antioch University’s MFA in Creative Writing, with a dual concentration in translation and fiction. They’re the current lead editor of translation for Antioch’s journal, Lunch Ticket, and their own writing and translations have been published in a variety of journals, including Asymptote, Denver Quarterly, and World Literature Today.

In this episode we discuss paparouna’s later-in-life foray into literary translation, their concentration on queer Greek literature and what it means to translate queerly, the fluidity of language, the origin of their chosen name, and the ecotone as a metaphor for how hybrids exist as not one or the other, but as endemic entities.

Guest Bio:

Born and raised in Athens, Greece, paparouna [pavlos stavropoulos] currently resides in occupied Arapahoe and Cheyenne territory in so-called Colorado, USA. They are a social and environmental justice educator, work in website management, write queer speculative prose, translate mostly queer Greek literature into English, and daydream about life as a marine mammal. An MFA Candidate in Translation and Fiction at Antioch—Los Angeles, paparouna was accepted into the 2018 Princeton Hellenic Translation Workshop, the 2018-2020 Lighthouse Book Project, the 2025 Bread Loaf Translators Conference, and the 2025 British Center for Literary Translation Summer School. They have been a guest fiction editor for beestung, were the web editor for The Thought Erotic, and are the Lead Translation Editor for Lunch Ticket. Their writing has been published in Progenitor, Asymptote, Exchanges, New Poetry in Translation (now World Poetry Review), Denver Quarterly, Timber, The Thought Erotic, Lunch Ticket, World Literature Today, and Κουίρ 2024: Βίωμα, τέχνη, θεωρία [Queer 2024: Lived experience, art, theory].

Show Notes:

Work by paparouna:

Translation work by paparouna:

  • paparouna is the Translation Editor at Lunch Ticket, Antioch University’s literary magazine
  • The Whale, by Ursula Foskolou, whose website includes some excerpts
  • paparouna has also translated Giota Tempridou’s work

Other references:

Credits:

  • Edited by Amanda Dee and mastered by Cedric Wilson.
  • Theme music by The Necklace, a project by Taylor Shields and Morgan Võ.

Sound Credits:

About the Podcast

Hybridia is a liminal place where people who straddle multiple identities can meet and speak about their experiences.

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