Point of Departure / Point of Return

Organizer: Cyprus Presidency - Council of the European Union, Deputy Ministry of Culture
Admission Status: Free Entry 

Literature

Lecture/Conference

The literary event “Point of Departure / Point of Return: Cyprus in and Beyond the Sea” presents contemporary poetesses from Cyprus, also aiming to indicate the power of literature as a resource for cultural identity and as a force for cohesion within the EU. The event will open with greetings from the Ambassador of the Republic of Cyprus to Bulgaria and from the representative of each of the collaborating academic institutions. At the first event in Sofia, the keynote speaker will be the Bulgarian Booker Prize winner Georgi Gospodinov. His speech will be followed by readings—in Greek, English and Bulgarian—by the Cypriot poets Eleni Kefala, Avgi Lilli, Eftychia Panayiotou and Erina Charalambous. The event will conclude with a round-table discussion on the survival of small languages and the role of topos in the search for a literary voice, with the island of Cyprus functioning as a centrifugal force of evolution: both a point of reference and a point of divergence. The discussion will be moderated by Associate Professor Dragomira Valtcheva at Sofia University and by Professor Dimitrios Roumbos at Veliko Tarnovo University.  

The event is carried out within the framework of the Programme “Events at Embassies of the Republic of Cyprus abroad”, in the context of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU 2026.