Kay Cicellis

Kay Cicellis (1926-2001) was born to Greek parents in Marseilles, where she spent her first nine years. Having learned French and English in the nursery, she spent her later childhood in Athens and on her father’s native island of Cephalonia. Her first stories, smuggled out of Athens during the Nazi occupation, were published in the British military press when she was a teenager. Her first story collection, The Easy Way, appeared with an introduction by Vita Sackville-West in 1950. Apart from her “Greek Trilogy,” Cicellis published a second collection, Death of a Town, and two novels, Ten Seconds from Now and No Name in the Street. With her husband she opened a fashionable restaurant in Athens, Balthazar, and raised two children. Although she found it more difficult in later life to write in English, she continued to translate into both English and Greek.