Mary P. Stavrou was born in Athens, Greece with roots in Florence, Italy. Her father, Vassilios Rodios was a renowned Athenian lawyer and amateur violinist and her mother, Aggeliki, an active feminist of her time and legendary heroin during the Nazi occupation in Greece.
Mary’s first appearance in Literature was from a very young age, with short stories and translations under her maiden name, Mary Rodiou. Having received her high school education at the American College of Greece in Ellinikon, near Athens, she fell in love with English and American Literature and continued her studies at the English Department of the University of Athens, School of Philosophy, specializing in the works of William Faulkner and Robert Frost. In fact, Mary had the opportunity to attend a full semester taught by William Faulkner himself, within the framework of a Professor exchange program at the University of Athens. After graduating with honors, she worked as a secondary education teacher in the Greek provinces and the island of Mytilene.
During the student demonstrations in Athens against the colonial occupation of Cyprus, Mary became acquainted with Patroclos Stavrou, president of the Cypriot Students Association, and fervent believer in his country’s self-sovereignty and independence from the British colonial forces. In 1960, Mary and Patroclos married and left Greece to settle in Cyprus, where Mary continued to work in secondary education, teaching Ancient Greek, Latin, History, Writing and Modern Greek at the Pancyprian Gymnasium in Nicosia.
She was then appointed to act as a liaison between the Ministry of Education and the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation in the Educational section of the Ministry until 1969, which marked the beginning of her career as author and journalist. In 1961 she launched a series of radio shows at the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation on the topic of Famous Women in Greek History, which remained on the air for two whole years. At the same time, she began to collaborate on a regular basis with the two most prominent Cypriot literary journals Λυρική Κύπρος and Πνευματική Κύπρος, sponsored by the Ministry of Education.
In 1964, Mary Stavrou was awarded with the Short Story Prize of the Hellenic Association for Letters (title in Greek: Ελληνικός Πνευματικός Όμιλος Κύπρου - Ε.Π.Ο.Κ.), for her short story entitled: “Από κείνη τη νύχτα”. In 1967, in close cooperation with a team of colleagues and intellectuals, she participated in the publication of the literary magazine Κυπριακός Λόγος and began a collaboration with the pioneering literary journal Κυπριακά Χρονικά, which unfortunately only lasted until 1974 and the Turkish Invasion in Cyprus. She also collaborated with the magazine Times of Cyprus and worked as a columnist in the literary section of Ο Κόσμος Σήμερα. In 1966, representing the Cyprus Chamber of Fine Arts, she conducted the presentation of the works of Cypriot painters and sculptors, wrote and published numerous reviews and articles of the exhibits about these artists’ work and collaborated with the art critic Tony Spiteris, who was serving at the time as General Secretary of the International Association of Art Critics. In 1970 she published her first novel in Athens, entitled: Η Πέμπτη Σφραγίδα («Σπουδή» Publishing House), for which she was awarded First State Prize for Literature by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus.
On July 20, 1974, while vacationing on the shores of Kyrenia with her eighteen month old daughter Niki and Eleni N. Kazantzakis, the Turkish forces began their armed invasion from air and water.
The Turkish soldiers forcibly removed them from their house and captured them, along with other vacationers of Cypriot origin.
However, owing to Eleni Kazantzakis’s intervention, who kept her self-composure during the entire time insisting they were Swiss citizens, the family was finally saved by a British helicopter which had been dispatched to the area to rescue foreign nationals. All the while, Mary’s husband, Patroclos, was being detained in house arrest by the junta forces, which had attacked the Presidential Palace in Nicosia a few days before and had attempted to assassinate the President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios.
After the Turkish Invasion, and Cyprus’s ascending struggle to recover its occupied territories (it never did), to reunite the missing persons with their families (most of them died in Turkish prisons) and to heal its many war wounds, Mary Stavrou, acknowledging the importance of cultural creation in a convalescing society, became a valued member of an intellectual movement aiming to promote Culture and the Arts on the island of Cyprus. She supported and encouraged Art exhibits, she collaborated as daily columnist with newspapers (such as: Σημερινή) and furthered the writing and publication of literary works. Her short stories, literary reviews, articles and exposés were published in various newspapers and magazines and transmitted through the radio.
She also served as Board Member of the Cyprus Theater Organization for seven years and wrote essays about great figures of humankind whose work and ideals changed the world, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nikos Kazantzakis. Her essay on Gandhi, highly praised by the academic community, was published in India and translated in three languages. Her essay on Nikos Kazantzakis was translated in English and published in Cyprus-to-day magazine, a publication which enjoyed a wide national and international circulation. In 1977, the Athenian Publishing House «Ίκαρος» published her second novel, entitled: Ένοχος. She also translated Viktor Frankl’s book, Psychotherapy and Existentialism, in the Greek language with the title: Λογοθεραπεία και Υπαρξισμός.
In 1990-1991 her two novels, Υπέροχοι Άλλοι and Απόδραση were published in Athens, the latter of which was awarded the State Prize of Literature in Cyprus. One of her most recent books was published in 2001 by «Δρόμων» Publishing House in Athens, and is entitled: Ο Υπαρξιακός Καζαντζάκης. She is a Member of the Hellenic Literary Society, and has been included in four National Biographical Encyclopedias, two in Greece and two in Cyprus.
Mary P. Stavrou’s writing embodies her deep friendship with Eleni N. Kazantzakis and her passionate admiration for Nikos Kazantzakis’s works. Eleni N. Kazantzakis, who came to live with Mary and Patroclos Stavrou after her accident in Geneva in 1989, spent every waking moment with the Stavrou family ever since, until her death on February 18, 2004. Mary P. Stavrou wrote a commemorative book about her life with Eleni entitled: Δίπλα στην Ελένη Καζαντζάκη, where she recounts the stories, events and intimate conversations they enjoyed together about Eleni’s life with Nikos, her dreams and aspirations for his work and the hidden aspects of her personality. Mary P. Stavrou continues to create inspiring work in her house in Voula, which is now a living museum of Eleni N. Kazantzakis’s final years.