Dr Gail Holst-Warhaft

Gail Holst-Warhaft is an adjunct professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Biological and Environmental Engineering and a member of the Graduate Field of Music at Cornell University where she was director of the Mediterranean Studies Initiative in the Institute for European Studies for 15 years. Her areas of interest are Modern Greek literature and music, Greek literature from antiquity to the present, translation, water and culture. She lived for a number of years in Greece, where she played with the composers Mikis Theodorakis and Dionysis Savvopoulos, before going to the States. She is also a poet and was appointed Poet Laureate of Tompkins County for 2011 and 2012. Her books include Penelope’s Confession [poems] (Attica Editions, 2007), The Cue for Passion: Grief and its Political Uses (Harvard University Press, 2000), Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature (Routledge, 1992), Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (Hakkert, 1980), Road to Rembetika (1975) and she is co-editor of Losing Paradise: The Water Crisis in the Mediterranean (Ashgate, 2010), The Classical Moment (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) and Water Scarcity, Security, and Democracy: A Mediterranean Mosaic. Eds. Francesca de Chatel, Gail Holst-Warhaft and Tammo Steenhuis. Joint publication, Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (Cornell) and Global Water Partnership-Mediterranean (Athens), 2014, The Fall of Athens (Fomite, 2016). She is a member of the Translation Committee of PEN USA and her most recent translation from Greek is The House by the River, by Lena Manta.