Erini Loucaides on award-winning fiction, diaspora and the ‘wounded’ Cyprus that shapes her work

Local booksculturediasporaliteratureTop News Erini Loucaides on award-winning fiction, diaspora and the ‘wounded’ Cyprus that shapes her work Erini Writing Table1 Relevant News Authorities admit major drainage failures across Engomi as residents report persistent flooding 10 September 2026 Erini Loucaides on award-winning fiction, diaspora and the ‘wounded’ Cyprus that shapes her work 10 September 2026 Binge it or skip it: Can This Love Be Translated? – Learning each other’s language 10 September 2026 Christina Karakondylou 10 September 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Cyprus-based writer Erini Loucaides has won the 2026 Minds Shine Bright Places Writing Prize for Relentlessly Prismatic, a short story exploring love, migration, secrets and the unfinished desires people often leave behind believing there will always be more time. The story was named the overall winner of the international competition, selected from hundreds of entries worldwide. The Minds Shine Bright Places Writing Prize also included separate categories for poetry, micro writing, short story and English as an Additional Language. At the centre of Relentlessly Prismatic is Sara, an Englishwoman described as a “romantic immigrant” who leaves London to marry in Cyprus, embracing the island even as it changes her. As she lies dying in a hospice, the story moves between her drifting consciousness and the perspective of her husband, Giannis, as he watches her fade. “The main inspiration was exploring the consciousness of a woman in her final morphine-induced hours after battling cancer,” Loucaides told en.philenews. “I tried to imagine what those final moments were like, still able to hear the world around her in the hospice but also drifting into other states.” Through Sara and Giannis’s alternating perspectives, she said, she wanted readers “to work out what is real, what is imagined as well as discover what is hidden between the spaces of their words.” For Loucaides, however, the story is also about Cyprus itself. “There’s Cyprus and its people who cradled Sara in a way her husband never did,” she said. The story also explores marriage, secrets and the way imminent death can bring overlooked desires into focus. “Not the large ones but the little things we keep meaning to undertake or experience because we feel there’s going to be a time for them except there usually isn’t,” she said. Cyprus has long been the foundation of Loucaides’s fiction. She writes about a specifically post-1974 island — one shaped by memory, loss and change — where her characters navigate questions of belonging and identity. “It serves as the backbone for so many of my stories,” she said. “It’s a post-1974 Cyprus which is what I feel confident writing about. My characters are contextualised in the light and shadow of this Cyprus.” Her own connection with the island is shaped by migration. Her parents were Vatili refugees who migrated to Australia, where her childhood was formed by what she describes as a “Cyprus-in-Sydney” world. “The last few years of my adolescence were spent in Cyprus when my parents repatriated so then I was getting to know a Cyprus I didn’t really grow up with,” she said. “Afterwards, studying for my degree in the UK, I became acquainted with the London diaspora.” Although she has lived in Cyprus for the past thirty years, Loucaides said the island continues to feel new to her. “I still feel Cyprus is new to me,” she said. “I re-visit places, trying to view them through my characters’ eyes and predicaments.” For a writer, she said, Cyprus carries a unique energy. “It’s a pulse veined by the new, the ancient and of course, the wounded.” The experiences of Cypriots living abroad are also central to her wider work. Loucaides said some stories draw from her own upbringing in Sydney and that of her relatives, creating composite characters caught between two cultures. “It’s a curious straddling of two cultures that can provide wide berth for teasing and humour,” she said. “Other times though, it can be fraught, particularly with the generational chasms.” Her stories focus less on external events and more on the psychology of people navigating those tensions. “My short stories are more character-driven rather than plot driven,” she said. Among the characters she has explored are young women searching for identity within Cypriot communities in Sydney, a widow returning to Cyprus after decades abroad and an English migrant who arrives expecting a “Shirley Valentine life” but instead encounters “the dangerous cracks and darkness of the island”. Another story, AmmoGHOSTos, takes an unconventional approach by being narrated from the perspective of a Varosha hotel revealing its secrets fifty years later. Loucaides said she was unsure how readers would respond to the idea. “I wasn’t sure how a talking hotel would be received,” she said. The story went on to place in the top 2% of almost 8,000 entries for the Commonwealth Story Prize. Loucaides has received repeated international recognition for her writing, including being a two-time runner-up for the Mslexia Best Women’s Fiction Prize, a Bridport Prize shortlistee and a three-time Commonwealth Short Story Prize longlistee. In 2023, she was selected as an Oxbelly Fiction Fellow, working alongside international literary figures including Booker Prize shortlistee Chigozie Obioma and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai. She has also been mentored by Windham-Campbell Prize winner Jennifer Makumbi. Such recognition, she said, has been an encouragement as her writing has become increasingly experimental. “Every selection or distinction is a wind in my writing sails,” she said. Writing can also be an isolating experience, particularly for English-language writers in Cyprus, she said, making international opportunities especially meaningful. “Overall such recognition is a reaffirming: maybe I do have something interesting to offer with my writing.” Loucaides has spent the past seven years writing and rewriting the ten interconnected stories that form her debut collection, waiting until each had gained recognition in international competitions before approaching publishers. She is now preparing to submit the collection for publication, either in Cyprus or abroad. Her next projects include a novel combining Greek mythology with contemporary Cyprus, as well as a work about nurses who served in Cypriot hospitals during 1974. “These women are made of steel and I believe their story needs to be told,” she said. Relentlessly Prismatic will appear in Minds Shine Bright’s Places 2026 anthology, due for release in November. Loucaides described the Australian publisher as “a wonderfully creative and ethical publisher” and said she was delighted to have her story represented in the collection. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News Authorities admit major drainage failures across Engomi as residents report persistent flooding Binge it or skip it: Can This Love Be Translated? – Learning each other’s language Things to do on Thursday, September 10 Temperatures to reach 37 degrees on Thursday Popular Greek singer Giorgos Mazonakis dies at 54 4th Cyprus Choreography Showcase Printmaking exhibition exploring human struggle and peace to open in Nicosia Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.