Honoured to see my story featured at Kingston Writers’ blog among the work of fellow students-aspiring writers in February 2016, during my first year as a graduate student for the MA Creative Writing Program of Kingston University, London.

By November 2017, having successfully completed the two-year-approved programme in Creative Writing, I earned my MFA – Master of Fine Arts.

A degree brings closure to a phase where commitment and discipline to an educational system are prioritised in one’s life.

In my case the physical presence of the Degree on my wall is a reminder, next to photos from the graduation day, that age places no deadline to pursue whatever is meaningful to us and necessary to improve our lives and the communities we are part of, or want to be part of in the future.

After the degree I keep doing what has always felt natural to me. Self-educating and writing, following my curiosity and vocation. Literature and writing remain at the centre of my life.

Here it might be worth mentioning that this student experience in my maturity proved more free-reined and open-ended than back in 1983-1985 at Essex University which lead to an MA – Master of Arts in Literary Translation.

Age may be seen as a privilege; ideally it endows us with burden-free time as if to counterbalance what we may have lost on the way in terms of strength, patience and vigour.

The post and the review and commentary from the Kingston Writers' blog.

Creative Work: ‘Mad Love Goes to the Beach’ by Lisa Samloglou

https://kingstonwriters.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/creative-work-mad-love-goes-to-the-beach-by-lisa-samloglou/

In her short piece, ‘Mad Love Goes to the Beach,’ Lisa Samloglou engages all five of her reader’s senses as she chronicles her internal struggle between her childhood love of the countryside with her rebellious teenaged preference for the city. She allows us to see the lush green of the landscape outside of Athens, smell the sea salt as she walks along the beach and picks up shells, hear the cicadas hum late at night, feel the fresh dirt of a self-planted garden beneath our fingertips, and taste the sweetness of figs and watermelon.

Samloglou’s remembrance of chasing butterflies allows us to recall our own childhood, but her assurance that she always released them from her clutched hand rather than holding onto them forever reflects her overall tone of the piece: we are happiest when we are free.

Here is my original story and my photos as posted in the summer of 2012

• https://urbantraveltales.com/2012/07/10/mad-love-goes-to-the-beach/

Thank you for reading me, leave a comment if you want.