Maria Ioannou
Limassol, Cyprus Email: plato@cytanet.com.cy Maria Ioannou was born in 1982, in Limassol. She has obtained a 1st Class
Honours degree in English Literature at the University of Reading, as well as an
MA in Twentieth-Century Literature at King’s College London. She has published
her work in newspapers, magazines and anthologies. Her story Standing Mountain
was one of the winner-stories in the international Short Story competition “A Sea
of Words”, organized by the Anna-Lindh Foundation and the IEMed (July, 2008),
leading to writing workshops in Barcelona, Madrid and Nicosia. Her poem
Garbagology was also one of the winner-poems in the “Art Attack” international
Poetry competition organized by the University of Zagreb (January, 2009) and her
script Am I dead? was selected to participate in UNDP’s filmmaking programme,
leading to “Shooting Reality” film festival (November, 2007). The short film has
also been selected to take part in the 5th Cypriot Short Films and Documentaries
festival (May, 2009). She has also been involved in a number of exhibitions,
including the “A Book for A Lifetime” exhibition at Artspace in Nicosia, where she
presented a ‘microscopic’ poetry collection called Stains (November, 2008). She
has also participated in “Rolling Frame” audio-visual exhibition at Stoa Aeschylus,
where she presented extracts from the play Platforms (May, 2008). She has
initiated the international Writers’ Chain Project, hosted by Arteri creative arts
magazine, including her own story Confessions of an Urban Canary and she is
also a founding member of the Mediterranean Writers Association and a member
of the Theatrical Writers Association of Cyprus. Her experimental fairytale My
Felicio, published in 2006 (illustrations by Elina Ioannou), has been translated and
presented through different art forms like photography, theatre and dance. Her
fairytale The Cave (illustrations by Lena Myos) has won 2nd prize in Unesco's
writing competition for sex equality in Cyprus. The Gigantic Fall of an Eyelash has
been selected to represent Cyprus in the 14th Biennale in Skopje, after a literary
competition organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture (February, 2009).
Published writer: Yes
Freelance: Yes |
