The Writer’s Center welcomes Maria Karametou for a book launch celebration of her debut novel, The Amalgam. Maria is in conversation with author Frances Park.

FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.

About the Book

Athens, 1984. All Meta wants is to escape her tyrannical father and the future he demands of her. But when her dying grandmother, Metaxia, presses a mysterious heirloom into her hands—begging her to return it to the lost Greek village in Asia Minor from which she was violently expelled during World War I—Meta makes a promise she doesn’t fully understand.

Fleeing to America in a desperate bid for freedom, Meta must survive on her own after her father cuts her off—penniless, hungry, and clinging to her dream of becoming an artist. Yet the heirloom wrapped in her grandmother’s handkerchief refuses to be forgotten. Years later, a shattering moment forces Meta to confront the life she has built—and the history she has tried to outrun.

Her journey to Turkey becomes a pilgrimage across continents and across time, echoing Metaxia’s own flight from violence decades earlier. As their parallel stories converge, Meta must finally face the truth: can we ever return to the places that made us—or only to the person we were meant to become?

Sweeping, intimate, and deeply human, The Amalgam is the tale of two women bound by survival, exile, and the unbreakable pull of home.

Maria Karametou, a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. from Athens, Greece, is a visual artist, writer, curator, and professor whose mixed media works are exhibited internationally in numerous museum and gallery shows that, aside from the U.S., include Germany, Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, China, and Korea, and are also in various museum, private, and public collections, including at the Holter Museum, Helena, MT; The Vorres Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; the Freddie Mac Corporation; and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her most recent solo exhibition, “Kallos,” was at the Katzen Museum, Washington, D.C. Karametou has organized and curated several international projects, such as EcoReflections (Resim ve Heykel Müzesi Galerisi, Ankara, Turkey) and participated in international collaborative projects, like Penelopeia, sponsored by the Presidency of the European Union. Her long career as a university professor includes, among others, a Fulbright Research Scholar award.

As a writer, Karametou has published short stories and poems in literary magazines, including Poet Lore, The RavensPerch, A Bilingual Anthology of Greek American Poetry, and Bethesda Magazine, after receiving an award in the Washington Metropolitan Area Short Story Competition. Other publications involve numerous artist statements, artist books, and essays. Presentations include reading her poems at the D.C. Embassy of Greece.

She is a Professor Emerita, having recently left her tenured position at the School of Art, George Mason University, Virginia, where she directed the Drawing Division to devote more time to her studio work and writing.

Inspired by her experiences and history of migration, mobility, and displacement, her work, both visual and literary, relates to identity and our personal journey of self-discovery. The Amalgam is her first novel. Website: mariakarametou.com

Frances Park is a Korean American author of sixteen highly-praised books – novels, memoirs, and award-winning children’s books. Her newest novel Ahn Love (Penguin Books SEA) was recently published in Southeast Asia and will be released in the US and UK in November 2026. Frances has spoken at the Smithsonian, the Korean Embassy, The Kennedy Center, American University, GMU, Virginia Tech, and has been interviewed on Good Morning America, NPR, Diane Rehm, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and CNN.

If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.

Enjoying our free events? Help us offer more programs to support writers with a $10 donation »