Our story
The awards that were always missing
Every year, hundreds of books are published in English about Greece. Thrillers. Historical fiction. Romance. Literary fiction. Written by authors from around the world who have spent years researching Greece, traveling to Greece, and falling in love with Greece.
Not one major English-language award has ever had a category for them. Every significant prize is based in New York or London.
None of them in the Mediterranean. None of them has a category for the writer who set their thriller in Santorini, their historical novel in Byzantine Constantinople, or their literary fiction on a Greek island.
The Homer Awards were built to change that.
Jonas Saul
Co-founder · Chair of Jury · 60 Published Thrillers
We have been bringing authors to Greece for years
The Homer Awards are the next chapter
Named for Homer
Homer is one of the most mysterious figures
in literary history. Born around the 8th century
BC, possibly on the coast of Ionia, he is the
presumed author of the two greatest epic poems
ever written — The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Some scholars believe he was one man. Others
believe the poems were shaped by generations
of oral storytellers. Tradition holds that he
was blind.
The Iliad follows the rage of Achilles and the
fall of Troy. The Odyssey follows Odysseus on
his ten-year journey home — against monsters,
gods, and a world that refuses to cooperate.
Every genre that exists today traces its roots
to those two poems. Not metaphorically. Literally.
The Homer Awards carry his name because this
is where it all began. In Greece. Where it
still begins.
Who we Are
.
Jonas Saul
owner
Thriller author with 60 published books, founder of Imagine Press, and chair of the Homer Awards jury. Teacher of tension and emotion in fiction. At the gala, Jonas reads the winning page from Penelope Award winner’s manuscript before naming the author.
Rania Stone
co-founder
Retreat leader, hospitality expert, and co-founder of Imagine Greece Retreats. Daughter of Markos Synodinos — poet and writer from Amorgos — in whose name the Homer Awards’ most personal honor is given.
A personal note
Markos Synodinos
Markos Synodinos was born in 1933 on Amorgos, a small island in the Aegean that has never stopped producing people of unusual depth.
He was a poet, a writer, and a man who believed that literature exists to tell the truth about the human condition. His works are held in libraries beyond Greece. Many have been set to music. He was
honored by the Society of Greek Writers, the Academy of Letters of Sicily, and the Panhellenic Union of Writers. He passed away in March 2021 at the age of 88.
Each year at the Homer Awards gala, Rania presents the Markos Synodinos Award for Literary Service to Greece in her father’s name. It is not submitted for. It is not voted on. It is given to the writer Markos Synodinos would have wanted to honor.
It is presented last of all. Because some things should be saved for the end.
