Cahiers Series: Mercy, Athena

The CWT presents: Andrea Applebee

The Chaiers Series - Mercy, Athena

Having arrived from the United States to make a new life in Greece, Andrea Applebee gives a vivid account of the challenges and pleasures that await her as she learns a new language and makes her way around Athens – assisted in both cases by her guide dog. Diagnosed at a young age with a degenerative condition affecting her vision and eventually leaving her blind, she brings a phenomenologist’s sensitivity to immediacy of perception when telling of how she has lived with her condition, survived her unusual upbringing in South Carolina and a relationship with a violent man, and gone on to embrace a future in a foreign land.

Andrea Applebee was raised outside of Charleston, South Carolina. She taught critical writing at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Duke and has interests that include documentary poetics, writing about photographs, and intersections between art and philosophy. Andrea moved to Athens, Greece, in 2016 with her guide dog Mercy. She works there as a freelance editor. Her first collection of poems, Aletheia (Black Square Editions) was published in 2017, and her more recent book of poems, Anemones, in 2022 (Magra Press).