Ioanna Lou (née Vasilakopoulou) was born in Athens in 1968. She studied journalism and worked in magazine publishing for six years. In 1998, she moved to Paris for postgraduate studies, first at Paris III and later at Paris IV Sorbonne, specializing in comparative and travel literature.
Her doctoral thesis, defended in 2005, focused on The Crossed Gazes of French Travelers in Greece during the 19th Century: A Different Kind of Writing? (supervised by François Moureau, with committee members Sophie Basch and Sarga Moussa). Since 1998, she has lived and worked in France.
She has worked in several Parisian museums (Grand Palais, Musée d’Orsay, Les Invalides, Château de Versailles), at the publishing house Denoël, and has taught French literature in secondary schools.
The Flowers of Goodness is her first poetry collection and her first published work in Greece.
She writes in both French and Greek, and experiments with various literary forms, including novellas, plays, and novels. She has two children with her Franco-Chinese partner.
Music curation: Maria Rempoutsika
Sound editing: Eleftheria Papoutsaki