Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was awarded the Greek National Poetry Prize in 1985 and the Greek Academy's Poetry Prize in 2000. She was born in Athens in 1939; her godfather and earliest encourager was the poet and novelist Nikos Kazantzakis. She was fluent in English, French, and Russian and was an acclaimed translator of, among others, Seamus Heaney and Alexander Pushkin. She lived partly in Athens, partly on the nearby island of Aegina, and passed away in January 2020.