Essays

Essay about traveling through Anatolia to discover my family’s past and my realizations along the way.

Published in the Expat Sofra anthology in English and Turkish. Includes related recipes.

“In the following essay, ‘Istanbul Is a Moveable Feast,’ Maria Eliades describes the of her writerly imagination as one intricately tied to the cities and landscapes that shaped her personal identity. A Greek American with roots not only in Greece but also across Anatolia, Eliades traces her physical and intellectual journeys from a Greek nationalist community in the United States to her repatriation in cosmopolitan Istanbul—the birthplace of her father—and her travels to Thessaloniki, where her grandmother once carried water from a well.“

Originally published in The Journal of Levantine Studies as the last of the dock-ument special series. Read it here.

An essay about the love for a place, how the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey shook apart my life, and how living in Istanbul shaped my Greek-American identity.

Named a notable essay in Best American Essays 2016.

Originally published in The Puritan. Read it here.

As a follow up to “Leaving Istanbul,” this essay explores what it means to rekindle a relationship and the complications of repatriation.

Originally published in The Puritan. Read it here.