Meet Stephanie Cotsirilos | Author, lawyer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Cotsirilos and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, Let’s talk about principles and values – what matters to you most?
Leaving something behind for the folks I care about — and that’s a broad swath of people. Making money from selling books isn’t always realistic, so I count the return on values that matter to me.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My extended family’s roots in Greece, Peru, and Asia have shaped my journey as an author, lawyer, social justice advocate, and performing artist. I’m proud and excited to draw on that unique combination of lineages and prior careers to write about a wide range of people who transcend adversity. They reveal themselves where memory, humor, injustice, and resilience collide. Under those conditions, human grace often emerges.

My journey began in Chicago, where I was born. Though my first language was Greek, English followed rapidly. When I was five, and someone asked, “What’s your name, little girl?” I apparently answered, “Judy Garland.” My immigrant grandmothers were horrified.

And there it was: the tension between a proudly assimilating family, what it thought of as upward mobility, and what I wanted to do with my life. The three weren’t always compatible. I got lots of support and lots of pushback. I’m not sure any of this was supposed to be easy.

In any event, I grew up, earned degrees in comparative literature and music from Brown and Yale, and went to New York for a fifteen-year career on and off Broadway – there creating the role of The Critic in the Tony Award-winning musical Nine, and writing songs and scripts produced at Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Writers Theatre, and other spaces. Along with that first career came big congrats and continued private anxiety from a family that hoped I’d “settle down” sometime soon.

To the family’s relief, I returned to Yale for a law degree and joined a New York firm. My late husband and I formed a family with Scottish, Greek, and Indigenous Peruvian ancestry. After his death, my small son and I moved to Maine.

I kept writing: legislative drafting, opinion pieces, strategic documents for nonprofits, poetry, fiction. As consultant and Interim Executive Director of Portland Ballet, I found myself returning full circle to the arts and soon after, was accepted into The Writers Hotel conference in Manhattan, joining U.S. and international peers.

This was a time to pull together the changes I’d experienced and what they meant. Frankly, I was lucky: I was financially secure at this point and as a result, was able to write without excessive pressure. It’s not an easy industry. It offers a great deal of rejection and delay along with success. That means you need to have a plan for supporting yourself. You also need to keep believing in what you have to say and in your purpose. Mine is to leave behind, in writing, something that will make people feel seen — even though, or perhaps especially because, on the surface, we may be nothing alike.

I’m now author of the novella My Xanthi, essayist in Beacon Press’ award-winning anthology Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family, and published finalist in Narrative Magazine’s Fall Story Contest and Mississippi Review’s Prize in Fiction. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, my work has appeared in print and online venues including McSweeney’s, The New Guard, and various media. A 2023 Sewanee Writers Conference alumna, I was previously Katahdin (Patrice Krant) Fellow in residence at Storyknife’s inaugural retreat for women writers in Alaska. Bottom line: I’m profoundly grateful.

Were they alive today, by the way, my Greek grandmothers might look askance at my traveling thousands of miles to Alaska to write. It’s also unlikely they could read anything I’ve written. Yet I hope they would be secretly proud – not least because I don’t answer to “Judy Garland” anymore, but to the name of my lineage.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
In advance, I would give my friend The Library Book by Susan Orlean. The book tracks the fascinating history of the Los Angeles Central Library and the mysterious 1986 fire that almost destroyed it. I’d then take my friend to visit the library, its massive art work, its direct engagement with the community’s needs. After that, we’d travel south to San Diego, to the beauty of the Pacific waterfront, to the ice cream shops on shore, the Asian restaurants, Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo. I’d take my friend toward the border with Mexico, to see how close Tijuana is to San Diego, to consider how many people commute across the international border daily, to view San Diego’s red trolleys — and maybe ride them — and to appreciate the sometimes unacknowledged ways the U.S. interacts with its southern neighbor daily.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Though I currently live in Maine, I want to give a shout out to people all over the country. First, to a southern California resident — one of my brothers. His principles in the law inspired the narrator in my first published book, the novella My Xanthi, set east of LA. I want to thank my mom for having loved the arts during my childhood outside Chicago. She let me know it was okay to love them, too. Thank you to my colleagues at The Writers Hotel conference in Manhattan, and to Nate Eldridge for suggesting I attend. TWH taught me how much I needed to learn to continue a writer and made it seem possible that I could. When someone takes you seriously, that’s a big gift. Thank you always to the magnificent Storyknife retreat for women writers in Alaska and to the honorable Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Thank you to my production manager, Vivian M. Cotte, for helping produce a book with a cover featuring the exquisite work of the Bronx and Harlem’s Valerie Deas, who left us to rest in peace on September 2, 2023.

Website: stephaniecotsirilos.com

Instagram: @scotsirilos

Linkedin: @stephaniecotsirilos

Twitter: @scotsirilos

Facebook: @Stephanie.Cotsirilos. Author/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@StephanieCotsirilos

Image Credits
Cover of My Xanthi: cover art “The Three Women” by Valerie Deas, layout by Jesse Sanchez Photo of wave at lighthouse: Dec 23, 2022 Benjamin Williamson @photographmaine Cover of The New Guard Vol. X: cover art “Girl Without a Pearl Earring” copyright Brendan Young, Kiring Young, and Vaness Battaglia (UK) by special permission of the artists, layout by Shanna McNair