Eugenia Triantafyllou is a Greek author and artist with a flair for dark things. Her work has won the Shirley Jackson Award and has been nominated for the Ignyte, Locus, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. She is a graduate of Clarion West writers workshop. You can find her stories in Reactor.com, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Apex, and other venues. She currently lives in Athens with a boy and a dog. “The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends” is her eighth appearance in Uncanny, an intricately layered story of friendship and changing perspectives, told in a series of book reviews.
Uncanny Magazine: This story is structured as a series of online review posts, complete with comments. What inspired you to use this structure? Was this the initial spark for the story, or did you have a different starting point?
Eugenia Triantafyllou: The initial spark came from a discussion over coffee I had with Avra Margariti. They were discussing a short story of theirs that was formatted as episode recaps of a teen tv show with each summary including spoilers. Something about a story containing spoilers tickled my brain in a visual way: I imagined it almost like an IF piece, where the reader has to click on the spoiler button to find out what happens. The thought was too exciting to me to let go. I kept thinking of all the ways a spoiler button could be used and my brain kept taking me back to Goodreads. So, I knew I had to come up with something interesting, yet possibly too complicated.
The story that helped me untangle my thoughts was Sarah Pinsker’s “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather.” The forum-like format and how she handled the comments and the unfolding of the plot through each comment section is truly a master class in conveying information.
(Avra’s story by sheer luck is slated to be published at the same time as mine in Tales & Feathers, if the readers care for a companion piece of sorts.)
Uncanny Magazine: I love the contrasting reader opinions on the same books, and also the shift in opinion that Lefteris has at the end. Are there books you didn’t connect with on first read that you came to love later on? Or something you love that a lot of readers bounce off of?
Eugenia Triantafyllou: When I started reading in English there were some stories I bounced off of because the prose style was too much for me to comprehend. I could understand the meaning of the words but I was getting tired trying to read the entire story. They were very voice-y and well-written but I wasn’t ready to appreciate them. My general level of understanding wasn’t there yet. When I came back to those stories a year or so later and read them anew, I fell in love with them. They ended up being pivotal to molding my own writing style.
Uncanny Magazine: What research did you do for this story? Was there anything you wanted to include that didn’t fit?
Eugenia Triantafyllou: Well, the research was of course reading a lot of book reviews. And I will mention something because people might not believe that you can include as many personal things in a book review as the characters do in this story. There was an instance where an entire family was arguing with each other in the comments of a review that was initially posted by the brother of the author. The book was non-fiction, detailing the author’s troubled life, but their brother wanted the readers to know that most of the events were actually fiction, according to him.
It was messy and sad but at the same time a fascinating account of this family’s history and relationships. And all that in a single review thread. It goes to show that you can fit a narrative into any kind of text.
The other type of research I did was that I looked into the lives of children’s authors. Mostly Greek ones that I have known since childhood, but some American ones as well. I’ve read about how their books were challenged or banned in some places because their content was deemed inappropriate for children. And yet, they are some of the most beloved and timeless children’s books.
We still see this today with so many books, especially those by queer and/or BIPOC authors, getting banned. There are people who wish these books gone because they want to create the impression that the world isn’t complex. That it follows their own simplified version of how things are. They also tend to think that children cannot deal with complexity in their reading but it’s quite the opposite. Children and young adults intuitively understand subtext and they process it in time. It helps develop critical thinking skills and a love of books. Complex and strange books are interesting. They can pick them apart and find new things to love each time and thus find themselves in them.
Uncanny Magazine: One running thread in the story is use of the #SPOILER# tag—are you someone who dislikes spoilers, or someone who doesn’t mind?
Eugenia Triantafyllou: I actually love spoilers. I am the kind of person who reads and re-reads a story and appreciates it more in the second or third reading. For me it’s not about what happens in the story but how it happens. So even if I happen onto a spoiler, it doesn’t tell me much or change how I view the book. I still have to read it in order to get the effect the author intended me to get. I have very rarely gotten frustrated for having something spoiled and that’s usually for books like mysteries, but even then, I don’t mind that much.
I am also someone who is really bad at using spoiler tags. A thing which I incorporated in the story.
Uncanny Magazine: There’s a quote from an interview with Titos Pavlou in one of the reviews: “And this was the first time I realized that I wanted to be a writer!” At what point did you realize that you wanted to be a writer?
Eugenia Triantafyllou: I would say that for me it was a slow and gradual process. I never wanted to be a writer as a child, I just read a lot of books and sometimes changed the endings in my mind if I didn’t like it. But I never consciously tried to write books or even keep a diary. For some reason writing words of my own invention seemed silly. But I enjoyed drawing a lot and I did it everywhere.
This led to me joining a small comic artist community in my early 20s and to drawing my own little comics. The more I created comics the more ideas I had. But because I wasn’t very disciplined at the time to develop both my storytelling and drawing skills, I decided to focus on one of those. I chose storytelling because my head was full of ideas at the time. And thus, at the age of twenty-six I decided to become a writer.
Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?
Eugenia Triantafyllou: Probably on something with an even weirder structure.
Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!
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