Meeting House: Emma House speaks to inspiring bookwomen from around the world.
Eva Karaitidi graduated from the Schools of Language and Literature at the University of Athens and the University of Paris III / Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her doctoral dissertation, which she defended in Paris in 1987, explores the art of poetry in ancient Greece.
Eva has been working as a publisher for Greece’s oldest publishing house (Hestia) since 1987 and in 1998, she took over the management.
As a writer, she has published two collections of short stories (from Alexandria publishers) and has translated five books of French literature for Hestia. She recently translated Micheline Flak and Jacques de Coulon’s Children Who Succeed: Yoga in Education, again for Hestia. She began studying and training in the Indian tradition of Satyananda Yoga / Bihar School of Yoga in the 1990s. Having trained in the Satyananda system, she’s been teaching yoga to adults since 2010 and to children and young adults since 2015.
France bestowed upon her the title of the Knight of the Order of Academic Phoenix in 2011.
Questions
1. Hestia has been a family run business for 5 generations – did you always want to join the publishing industry having grown up with it? What made you decide to join publishing eventually?
To be honest when I was younger, I did not even consider becoming a publisher. Of course, I loved books, and having been raised with them, they were a special part of my youth, as is the case for many children. I admired storytelling, thus authors, but I considered the publishing industry to be about commerce and money, so I thought it was not for me. I mostly admired my physician father and his work with patients and diseases.
I eventually entered the family business after long studies in Greece and France, as a sudden feeling of duty, and of gratitude for a long tradition that kept offering education, knowledge, and enjoyment to many generations of Greek language speakers and readers.
2. How has the business managed to keep going through the last 135 or so years, especially given the various economic and political turmoil in Greece? What have been the secrets to success?
I hope the secrets will be discovered one day… I think it had to do with vision, firm resolutions, adaptability, integrity, sense of service beyond material gains and losses. Not forgetting the aim.
3. What challenges have you faced in your publishing career, especially since you took over the general management of the business?
The greatest challenge has always been overcoming my own limits. My great helping hand was, and still is the eternal feeling of being a student having to learn new matters every day and passing exams every minute.
I had to overcome the suspiciousness of most people around me by proving I was not just my mother’s daughter. I had to convince employees, colleagues, authors, authors’ heirs and rights managers, agents etc. I had also to convince my own family that I was capable to manage this difficult business. And the challenges continue!
4. What have been the highlights of your career so far?
Publishing books that overcome the time limits. Surviving the deep Greek crisis, surviving the pandemic, moving on when everything seemed lost. Always honoring the authors that keep honoring us. It is a long story we keep cultivating: we keep publishing the great authors of the 1930s (still under rights and still appreciated and selling good), but our youngest author published his first book when he was only 23.
5. What is the environment like for women in publishing in Greece? Have you ever faced any difficulties in the industry or in running your business because of your gender?
Women have been very active in the book sector even at older times, meaning my mother’s generation (she was born in 1928). I mean, Greece is a very traditional country, very conservative at times, and women were not exactly brought to shine as careerists, but, despite this, they were somehow naturally accepted as publishers, in the Athenian environment at least. And they did shine!
Even in my generation (born in 1955) girls and women felt in their skin they had much less opportunities comparing to those of men, but I personally always felt equal to anybody (and to men), and that stands you in good stead from being thrown out of the game.
6. Can you tell us a little bit about the publishing industry in Greece today?
It has a really very small role in the whole economic game, but it is very important, as is the diversity of the publishers and the quality and variety of the books produced. Most of the publishing companies are family businesses, and many new ones arise every now and then, run by cultivated and capable young people. I firmly believe that what we all have in common is passion. Without it you cannot go on in this country. I think many or maybe most of us publishers bear this in common with artists.
7. How does Hestia fit into the landscape? What kind of publishing does Hestia specialize in? How does your bookshop fit in the picture?
Hestia specializes nowdays mostly in literature, greek and international, history, testimonies and biographies, essays, philosophy, psychoanalysis. We also publish a well known review called Nea Hestia, being published under different editors since 1927.
I have a great respect for poetry and children’s literature and I hope can restart with them in the future. An interesting thing is that many publishers were literaly saved by selling children’s books during the financial crisis.
8. What has been your vision for the company over the last 23 years and what does the future hold?
It has been mainly a vision of respecting and honoring the great opportunity I was given by inheriting this publishing company. Of course every generation leaves its traces on the long path of Hestia. Mine is continuing the great literary tradition and also working with new subjects, as yoga or LGBTQ+ literature. We recently published a book by young author and performer Sam Albatros (pseudonym) which has become a bestselling title, and we plan to publish two other important novels (one by a very young author, the other by a most respected film director and essayist). We are branching out of this new coming trend of describing a highly hypocritical and homophobic society it was about time to discover in Greece.
9. You run a successful publishing company, you are a writer and a translator, and you teach yoga – how do you manage your various aspects of your life and career?
Alas, I am not a writer, I just love to exercise with language and it so happened that I kept writing short stories for 15 years or so, and I think it was my way to find balance in my everyday life. And it was over later on, when balance was introduced by the routine of yoga practice.
As for the translation, this is another form of practising with language and so I have translated several French authors (4 novels by Jean Mattern, Yasmina Réza and Pierre Mérot) which have been published by Hestia, a psychoanalysis book by Jean-Bertrand Pontalis and a yoga manual for school teachers by Micheline Flak and Jacques de Coulon.
Regarding yoga, I haven’t taught it since the beginning of the pandemic as I don’t teach online. So I just taught people for free in the Greek islands during my summer holidays (one of my students was 97 years old!) and I keep practising regularly as a Satyananda Yoga disciple, following different online programs, mostly Greek but also international.
The publishing job actually occupies most of my time!
Emma’s always looking for more Meeting House interviewees. To take part please get in touch via Twitter, Facebook or info@womeninpublishing.org.
