This month’s Antonios Kounalakis Award winner hails from Down Under. His nominator downplayed his contributions to our community by describing him as “a lawyer, a writer, a person with a lot of interest in religion and a lot of interest in Greek and other European history, and a person who is always involved in events that relate to Greek history and heritage.” Dean Kalimniou (Konstantinos Kalymnios) is indeed all of those things, and for the past twenty-one years one of the ways he has most deeply influenced the Greek-Australian community in particular is through his column Diatribe in the sixty-five-year-old Greek-English newspaper Neos Kosmos.

Diatribe’s Dean from Down Under

In his October 11th column last year, Dean wrote, “Underlying twenty years of Diatribe is thus an immense love for our community and a sense that there is something truly valuable in espousing a Greek cultural identity in Australia. In celebrating who we are, examining both negative and positive aspects to our multifaceted existence and accepting that we are so diverse, so fascinatingly complex, so omnipresent in all fields of the mainstream as to defy definition, in postulating whether we are in fact engaged in two discourses, an outward one, responding to the way the ruling class sees and defines us and an inner one, conducted both in English and Greek responding to our own needs and internal tensions, we draw ever closer. It is this closeness, this feeling that despite our many differences there is a common thread linking all of us, encouraging us to support and encourage and assist each other that the beauty of our community lies.” Beautiful and on point.

Last year, Dean’s first children’s book, Soumela and the Magic Kemenche, was published. The inspiring story is written in parallel Greek and English and is his eighth published book, following seven collections of poetry written in Greek. Dean’s nominator said, “Dean has always assisted and represented the Greek community and we are very proud of him. He continues to touch people every day of his life.”

We are proud of and grateful for you, too, Dean. Να ζήσεις!