The Festival Founders
Annabelle Louvros
Annabelle was first introduced to Greece as a child in the 60s, when her mother was contracted to take photographs for the then emerging Greek tourism industry. Returning on holiday in the 80s, her love affair with Corfu truly blossomed and was sealed for life during her time working and living on the island. Annabelle, a Londoner, has worked in the art publishing, catering and property industries but is most inspired by working with communities and on projects outside the traditional commercial sectors.
Involved with school governance, subsidised housing and green space regeneration, she has long wished to transfer her energies and passions to realise and promote aspects of Corfu’s existing array of riches to a wider audience and introduce new visitors to the place she loves. Annabelle’s aim is that a celebration of the arts, both local and invited from elsewhere, in this special and beautiful place, will attract attention to Corfu in an unexpected, different and unique way.
Alex Preston
Alex Preston is the prize-winning author of four novels, most recently the critically acclaimed Winchelsea. Alex appears regularly on BBC Radio and television. He writes for The Telegraph, Harper’s Bazaar and The Economist as well as for the Observer’s New Review. Alex nurtures a deep and abiding love of Greece and Corfu. He is a long-distance runner and swimmer and traversed the Hellespont as part of the Year of Troy celebrations in 2018 and is planning to undertake the Albania to Corfu swim as soon as we can sign him up. His work is published in Greek by Papadopoulos Publishing and Alex has written a regular monthly column for Epsilon Magazine in Athens.
Nikos Louvros
Nikos Louvros (12 Jan 1947 – 18 Jan 2021) was born in Corfu Town, and co-founded CricketCorfu and the Corfu Literary Festival with his wife, Annabelle. Niko was a passionate chef, traveller, event organiser and travel consultant and lived in London for many years, never losing his affection for his home island, describing the UK as his lover but Kerkyra as his mother.
In recent difficult years, and with growing concerns over the un-sustainability of hyper tourism, Niko devoted his time to encouraging and supporting local cultural bodies and enthusiasts to develop their existing offers and charms to the wider travelling world, and to work together and encourage a fresh cohort of visitors to the island, whilst also providing alternative potential to Corfiots themselves. There is a place for seaside holidays but Corfu is so much more – and her music, art, literature, sporting opportunities, history and food heritage, along with her natural riches and environment, need care, time protection and attention, so that all may enjoy and benefit from them.
Ambassador Patrons
Corfu Literary Festival began as a small-scale labour of love, and has already grown into something richer and more substantial than we first imagined. Part of what makes it special is the way it has drawn together different kinds of energy around a shared devotion to Corfu, to books and to the good life. With Niko now gone, we felt the need to think carefully about the Festival’s future and about how its identity and spirit might endure.
That is why we have created a board of ambassador patrons: a mix of writers who came to the Festival and loved it enough to want to become part of it, and local talented friends and supporters who cared enough to help it return and flourish. What unites them is a deep understanding of what the Festival is trying to be, and of the particular magic that can happen in Corfu when literature finds its place there.
Sarah Churchwell is Professor in American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she directs the Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities. She is the author of The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and The Lies America Tells; Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby; Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream; and The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, most recently adapted into a 2022 CNN/BBC series narrated by Jessica Chastain.
Her journalism has appeared widely in international newspapers and periodicals, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian and many others, focusing especially upon American culture, history, and politics. She has also frequently contributed to television, documentary film, and radio, with appearances including Question Time, Newsnight, Sky News, BBC Breakfast and numerous appearances across all channels. She was co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer’s Award, named by Prospect magazine one of the world’s Top Fifty Thinkers in 2020, and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2021.
Danai Dragonea is an award-winning author, journalist, and co-founder of the organization Every Single Story, dedicated to women’s storytelling and amplifying female voices. Her novel The Island of Rain – A Secret Diary received the 2023 Debut Author Award for books for children and young adults from the Greek Section of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People). The same novel also won the 2023 Young Adult Fiction Award from the Public Bookstores (Public Book Awards). She has delivered talks on female identity and gender stereotypes, while Every Single Story’s podcast As Long as It Lasts, I’ll Be Here! received special mention at the 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. In October 2024, her new book The Island That Travels Through Time was published by Dioptra Editions. CLF is delighted to have Danai, a daughter of the isle, as part of the team.
Although he was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, Julian Hoffman has lived for the past quarter of a century beside the Prespa lakes in northern Greece. He is the author of three books. His latest, Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece, was a Financial Times Best Book of Summer 2025 and was Longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award. Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save our Wild Places was the Highly Commended Finalist for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation in 2020 and a Royal Geographical Society ‘Book of the Year’, while The Small Heart of Things won both the 2012 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. His upcoming book, The Last Wild River, which explores the unique Aoos-Vjosa river system flowing through Greece and Albania, will be published in July 2027. He is also a Grand Juror for the Marŝarto Prize for walking arts and is a passionate conservationist and amateur naturalist.
Elena Karoumpi has been professionally active in the fields of Hospitality, Food Service, Conference & Event Planning in the UK, Thailand and Greece for over 30 years.
Elena co-owns Olive Retreat Acharavi Villas in Corfu, provides VIP Concierge Services for Ionian Estates Luxury Villas, has served as a Council member of Corfu Chamber of Commerce and is the current President of Soroptimist Club Corfu, a member of Soroptimist International, an NGO promoting women’s empowerment and supporting women and children’s rights. She has also participated as a Mentor of young women entrepreneurs in various programs of the European Soroptimist Federation. She holds a Masters Degree in Tourism Planning and Development from Surrey University and a Bachelor Degree in English & American Literature from Aristotle University, Thessaloniki and speaks four languages.
Gail Lynch has worked in various roles in UK publishing since 1984, including at BBC Books, Picador, Chatto & Windus, Jonathan Cape, Granta Books, Heinemann, HarperCollins, Frances Lincoln and Oneworld. She is now a freelance consultant working with independent publishers and is Managing Director and co-owner of illustrated book publisher Pimpernel Press and a board director at children’s publisher Otter-Barry Books. Gail has been having a long affair with Corfu since the early 1980s.
Sofka Zinovieff was born in London, has Russian ancestry and lives mostly in Athens. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge, did research for her PhD in the Peloponnese and worked as a freelance journalist in Moscow and Rome. The author of six books including Putney, her work often focuses on Greece, including the memoir Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens and the novel, The House on Paradise Street. She is chair of the judges for the Runciman Award, a literary prize for the best book about Greece. Her latest publication is Stealing Dad (paperback 2026), a tragicomedy about a dysfunctional family, inspired by being banned from her father’s funeral.