Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was born in 1939 in Athens. Her father was a good friend of Nikos Kazantzakis, who became her god father and encouraged her to publish her first poem at the age of sixteen. She studied foreign languages and literature at the Universities of Nice, Athens and Geneva and become a professional translator from French, English and Russian into Greek. Among her translations there are works of Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, William Shakespeare, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Poushkin. She has published nearly twenty collections of poetry. In 1962 she was awarded the First Prize for Poetry of the City of Geneva (Prix Hensch). In 1985 she won the Greek National Prize for Poetry for the collection The Suitors and in 2014 she was awarded again the National Prize for her whole work. In 2000 she won The Ourani Foundation Academy of Athens Award. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including Swedish. She has taught at Harvard University, University of Utah, and San Francisco State University. She lives on the island of Aegina during the summer months and in Athens throughout the winter.