We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stephanie Cotsirilos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Stephanie , really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I found purpose as an author thanks to a grandmother who couldn’t read or write — and by watching rescue dogs save lives in the rubble of Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake. Until I was about twelve years old, I didn’t know my paternal Greek yiayia was illiterate — a word I dislike because she was literate in important things, like strength and determination. Her father in Greece had apparently forbidden her from going to school; yet once in the U.S., she insisted her children prioritize education. She took my father for a walk after he returned from WWII and told him, “You’re not joining the family business. Go to college.” He did, and became a lawyer. I also went to college, no question about it. After studying literature and music, I bucked norms for respectable Greek-American women by joining the Yale Repertory Theater. Worse, I moved to New York for a fifteen-year career on and off Broadway. It meant the world to me for a long time. Then, in 1985, when I’d already begun to question how I could better connect to the community around me, I watched TV coverage of the catastrophic magnitude 8 earthquake in Mexico City. And there they were: rescue dogs whining at life when they found it, leading their human handlers, sniffing, digging, scrambling over buried survivors. I fell in love with those exhausted dogs and dehydrated human companions. Unlike them, I hadn’t a single skill that could help anyone in Mexico City that day. I went into a period of serious re-evaluation and research, used savings to enroll in LSAT classes, and was in law school eighteen months later, searching for ways to meet human need. A winding journey of many years and combined skill sets made me Interim Executive Director for Portland Ballet in Maine. Music through the walls told me I had to return to the arts, this time to writing. I understood I had to draw on my history with immigrant relatives, music, loss, and law to tell stories only I could tell. That’s all a writer can do, and I had to try.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
What I do, what I find most exciting, is to use the gift of time to bring together what’s landed me in this phase of life, where too few women have been traditionally acknowledged, and where there’s an opportunity to share support and joy with those who travel with me. Yes, I was the granddaughter of immigrants. Yes, I was a performing artist. Yes, I was a lawyer. And yes, I am aways deeply grateful to be a mother. I’m an author now – and a community activist in my own way. I tap a multiracial family and my prior careers on Broadway and in law to write about injustice, humor, and resilience. I’m author of the novella My Xanthi and essayist in Beacon Press’ anthology Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, my work is forthcoming as a published contest finalist in The Sewanee Review, and has appeared in McSweeney’s, Narrative, and Mississippi Review. My songs and scripts were produced in New York. A Sewanee Writers’ Conference alumna, I’ve been selected for the 2025 Hobart Festival of Women Writers, and was Katahdin fellow at Storyknife’s inaugural retreat for women writers in Alaska. I was also a values panelist at the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute’s 2024 Fall Forum – where I shared my experiences with young women in high school and was humbled by their experiences. I hold degrees in comparative literature, music, and law from Brown and Yale.
In our complex world, I hope readers will find common cause with my novella, My Xanthi – the story of a Greek immigrant woman whose wartime secrets teach a criminal defense lawyer about love’s triumph over injustice. The book’s available in print and ebook formats. For print, I do encourage folks to use their local bookstore – which can order for prompt delivery. Other standard global delivery methods are listed at my website, stephaniecotsirilos.com. I’m excited about producing an audiobook version – which I intend to narrate myself – in 2025.
I’m equally excited to be one of fifteen presenters at the June 6-8, 2025 Hobart Festival of Women Writers in Hobart, NY. I’ll conduct a workshop entitled “Daring to Begin: Writing Later in Life.” We’ll explore the stories of women artists who’ve defied the odds to come into their own in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. We’ll explore ways of honing our craft as we tell our uniquely necessary stories.
I have a novel and a memoir in the pipeline. Please stay tuned.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Read and connect, practice, tell shame to get lost. For writers, Stephen King is reported to have said it best: Read, read, read. I get it: Your learning may take years. Mine did and surely continues to do so. That’s all right. We’re developing a skill set, after all. A violinist doesn’t play Bach partitas exquisitely by waiting around for the muse to strike. A lot of scales and technical exercises are involved. Write something – something – every day if you possibly can. Take classes when they’re useful. Surround yourself – and this is not an easily achieved goal – with people who advance your spirit, craft, and work. That’s a tall order. Keep after it. And though easier said than done, don’t be ashamed of failure. It hurts, but is often the doorway to where we need to go. Writing resonates with the larger, difficult world around us, and there’s no painless way to deepen that connection.
What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?
I’m going to cheat and cite two things. (1) My parents chose to keep living courageously forward even after my mom was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer at the age of twenty-nine. She defied the odds for twenty-six more years, after a full life with her family. (2) My parents taught me Greek as my first language. Living and language’s rich variety opened up my world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stephaniecotsirilos.com
- Instagram: @scotsirilos
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.cotsirilos
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniecotsirilos/
Image Credits
Judy Beedle (for photos of me)
Valerie Deas (book cover art)
Jesse Sanchez (book cover design)
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
