Xenitia – Understandings of Home, Identity and Belonging

Join us for an evening of readings and conversation with the 2020 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage writer in residence Michalia Arathimos.

Yearning for a lost home
What is the meaning of home? For Michalia Arathimos notions of home are inextricably bound up with the notion of xenitia — a feeling common in the Greek diaspora, a feeling of being in exile, or of longing for ‘home’. But the real meaning of xenitia is untranslatable. It is a longing for a home that no longer exists, or which perhaps never existed in the first place.

How does this longing, this loss play out in the life of a writer who is the child of migrants living in a colonised country? And how does she explore that in her work?

About the speaker
Michalia Arathatimos is a Wellington-born writer of Greek descent and writer in residence at the Randell Cottage and working on ‘Cartographia’, a novel exploring questions of home and identity.

Her first novel ‘Aukati’ was published in 2017 by Wellington’s Mākaro Press. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University’s IIML and is currently fiction reviewer for the Melbourne’s ‘Overland Magazine’.

Check before you come
Due to COVID-19 some of our events can be cancelled or postponed at very short notice. Please check the website for updated information about individual events before you come.

For more general information about National Library services and exhibitions have look at our COVID-19 page.