Kostas Kouloufakos

Kostas Kouloufakos (1924-1994). Kostas Kouloufakos, son of Petros and Angeliki, was born in Athens and hailed from the village of Koutifari in Messenian Mani. He had two younger brothers, Tasos and Nikos. During the occupation, while still a student, he organized the independent resistance group Free Greeks, which led to his arrest by the Italians and imprisonment in Spoleto, Italy, in 1941. He escaped two years later and fled to Egypt, where he joined the Greek Navy. He participated in the Middle East movement and returned to Greece after the liberation. In 1945, he enrolled in the Chemistry Department of the University of Athens but abandoned his studies shortly before graduation (1953) as he decided to pursue a career in literature. During the civil war, he joined EPON, went underground, and was exiled to Ai Stratis and Makronisos. He returned to Athens in 1953, where he lived as a licensed exile for health reasons until 1962, when the camps were abolished. As a member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), he faced new hardships and exiles with the imposition of the April dictatorship. After the restoration of democracy, he continued his active political involvement in the Left. He married Sofia Netoura, with whom he had a son, Petros, and in a second marriage, Maria Kostakou, with whom he had a daughter, Georgia. He first appeared in the literary world in 1950 with the publication of an excerpt from the poetry collection "On the Sixth of May" in the pages of the magazine Free Letters. The publication was initiated by his friend and comrade, Yiannis Ritsos. A founding member and editorial board member of the magazine Art Review, where he served as content manager (1955-1962) and editor-in-chief (1965-1967), founder and director of the publishing house Diogenes (1971), founding member of the Hellenic Authors' Society, and collaborator of the magazine Iridanos, Kouloufakos published poems, book reviews, studies, and translations. He also engaged in theater as a founding member of the theatrical organization Desmoi (1975, together with Vasso Katraki, Aspasia Papathanasiou, and Alexandros Argyriou) and worked as a literature teacher at the drama school of Leonidas Trivizas' People's Experimental Theater and in private education. For more biographical details on Kostas Kouloufakos, see Argyriou Alex., "Kouloufakos Kostas," World Biographical Dictionary 5. Athens, Ekdotiki Athinon, 1986, Synodinos Zissimos Ch., "Chronology of Kostas Kouloufakos (1924-1994)," Mandragoras 3, 4-6/1994, pp. 8-10, and ch.s., "Kouloufakos Kostas," Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature 9. Athens, Haris Patsis, n.d. (Source: Archive of Greek Authors, EKEBI).