Christy Lefteri

Christy Lefteri was born in London in 1980 to Cypriot refugees. Her father served as a commanding officer during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and eventually left the country for reasons of personal safety. As a result, Lefteri grew up sensing that her parents had lost something significant and watching her father struggle with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. Lefteri worked as a psychoanalyst until she became interested in writing as a means to express trauma. In 2010, she earned a PhD in creative writing from Brunel University, where she taught as a lecturer for many years. The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) was Lefteri’s second book and won the 2020 Aspen Words Literary Prize. The novel is based in part on the author’s experiences volunteering at a refugee center in Athens in 2016 and 2017. During that time, she witnessed heartbreaking human suffering and resiliency. While writing the book, she consulted Syrian refugees who vetted her manuscript for authenticity. Lefteri’s other works include her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible (2010), about the Cyprus war; Songbirds (2021), about migrant domestic workers in Cyprus; and The Book of Fire (2023) about climate change and forest fires in Greece. Lefteri lives and writes in North London.