Dr Dina Kafiris FRSA was born in Sydney, Australia, of Greek parents. She took her undergraduate degree in English literature and creative writing with a minor in psychology at the University of Western Sydney, during which she studied Ethics (philosophy) at Deree – The American College of Greece. She subsequently moved to the UK where she earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Leeds, after which she obtained a Graduate Certificate in Film and Video from the University of Technology Sydney. Ηer short film The Lost Poem was screened at the 4th International Video Poetry Festival, Athens; Poetry Underground Film Festival, as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival; StAnza Poetry Festival, Scotland; Portobello Film Festival, London, and elsewhere.
Kafiris’ poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Mōnolith: Visuals & Verses, Wild Court, American, British and Canadian Studies, The Journal, Nea Synteleia, Horizon Review and Odyssey Magazine, among others. She was a regular member and collaborator of the Corais group of the Greek literary review Nea Synteleia (New End of the World), under the Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis. Her debut poetry chapbook The Blinding Light Circling Elpida, in one act was published by Original Plus (UK) in 2014 and is from her forthcoming trilogy 21st-century Modern Greece: The First Decade. Images from her photographic collection of Greek society and culture were presented at the 2nd London Hellenic Festival, ‘Coming Together’ in a solo exhibition titled ‘Athens, my Revolution: A Writer’s Diary’; and in the group exhibition ‘Exclude Social Exclusion by Understanding, Learning, Participating’, organised by the Centre for Research and Action on Peace (KEDE), Greece, with former first lady of Greece, Margaret Papandreou as guest speaker. In 2015 she received a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Bangor. Her doctoral research was on the role of the writer in society, particularly the truth-teller. She also attended the ‘Free Speech and Literature’ course by English PEN with Bishopsgate Institute at the Free Word Centre, London, and masterclasses with Slavoj Žižek at Birkbeck, University of London. She has received several awards, including from Varuna, the National Writers’ House; Gladstone’s Library; University of Wales, Bangor, and was Writer in Residence and Guest Lecturer at Kingston University London.
Kafiris was in November 2023 appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK).
