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The Thessaloniki Writers' Association enjoys a strong and vital presence in the literary world, and prolific results that speak for themselves. It was founded by intellectuals of note residing in Thessaloniki and in its long life has had the privilege of counting among its members the city's most important writers.

The Association was established by means of Decision No. 2893/62 of the Thessaloniki Court of First Instance following a statement of intent made by the city's intellectuals in which they emphasised: "the need to increase the ever rising intensity of the city's literary pulse in favour of overall cultural progress and the organisation of its general promotion by means of the 'face' of a literary association, so that the writers of Thessaloniki may achieve greater social recognition in the present and even progress towards more advantageous demands of an intellectual or more practical nature, as the need may arise".
The statement was signed on 8 June 1961 by: Tilemahos Alaveras, Manolis Anagnostakis, Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou, Takis Varvitsiotis, Yiorgos T. Vafopoulos, Takis P. Gkosiopoulos, Yiorgos Delios, Chrysanthi Zitsea, Panos Thasitis, Yiorgos Themelis, Achilleas Kalevras, Zoe Karelli, Ilias P. Katsoyiannis, Yiorgos Kitsopoulos, Kleitos Kyrou, Paraskevas I. Miliopoulos, Babis Nidas, Christos Dalias, Alexandra Parafentidou, Roula Papadimitriou, Sarantos Pavleas, Nikos Gavriil Pentzikis, Petros S. Spandonides and Vassilis Fragkos.

The TWA was founded fifty years after Thessaloniki's liberation and its incorporation into Greece, about forty years after the population exchange and the arrival of refugees on its soil, and around twenty years after the closure of the troubled, war-stricken decade of World War II, the annihilation of the Jewish element and the Civil War.
Those who have studied Thessaloniki's history will know that the modern historical events mentioned were the outcome of three successive wars and played a decisive role in shaping its contemporary face. They altered the city's demographic composition, establishing the Greek minority of the start of the century as the dominant population, and in a span of fifty years radically changed the city, lending it a totally different character.
A new society came into being; a new world was born from the forces that flooded into it and was assimilated into the existing Greek society, giving it new impetus -an impetus with many aspects, one of which was cultural and artistic expression as a component of the city's traditional communication with Western Europe. Cultural expression could not but diverge from the woes of slavery and the struggle for liberation, and of course differed greatly from established Athenian literary perception. It was something else. Something new that was described and defined as modern.
In the years that followed, literary creation in Thessaloniki proved its worth, establishing itself on a national level and developing a sense of worthiness in the consciousness of the city's litterateurs, which was initially expressed by means of the new literary journals that came into being and later topped off -in 1962- with the founding of the Thessaloniki Writers' Association.
The first general meeting was convened by the provisional executive committee at the Touring Club's hall, where the first Board of Trustees was elected, comprising Yiorgos Delios (chairman), Christos Dalias (vice chairman), Tilemahos Alaveras (secretary), Yiorgos Kitsopoulos (treasurer) and Yiorgos Themelis, Panos Thasitis and Kleitos Kyrou (trustees). (photo 01)
As was natural, the first steps taken by the board of the newly-established association were in line with the founders' declared views. It therefore comes to no surprise that the first objectives were to achieve real recognition of the role that writers played in the life of the city (photo 02). The Association's second Board of Trustees began its term with Public Debates, in which 3-4 writers talked on a specific topic and discussed it with the audience. This activity, a significant choice, has continued to be practised throughout the Association's history, with various transformations, according to the demands of the day.
Similar gatherings in the form of, not a lecture, but rather communication achieved by the writer using dialogue, reveal how deeply significant it is to an artist to be able to enjoy a direct and spontaneous relationship with his audience, who is at the same time the source of his inspiration.
What stance and what attitude could an organisation such as the Writers' Association adopt when public speech was later constrained (1967)?
Overlooking the difficulties and assuming a great risk, the Association introduced Meetings with Young People, which were to evolve into a medium through which freedom, responsibility and self-respect were taught, a medium through which some of the most important writers of the younger generation reached maturity.
The Meetings with Young People, which at first were held in various halls around the city -since the approximately ten-year efforts of the Association to find a permanent home had borne no results -took the following form: members of the Association and young people with literary aspirations gathered together and held discussions. There was no podium, no hierarchy and no protocol. Anyone could speak about whatever interested or concerned them or, perhaps, bothered or distressed them. Some read their writings out loud and the discussion then revolved around that.
The unconstrained discussions between mature craftsmen and budding writers served as a building block on which self-respect could flourish, leading these meetings to evolve into a testing ground for aesthetics and ethos in the written word. An ethos that was zealously guarded throughout these meetings by the participants themselves, well aware as they were of the fact that it formed the foundation of free and qualitative exchange, at a time when slander was tending to be considered a virtue and public expression, at any given moment, easily open to calumny and hence dangerous.
Young people's response and the success of this endeavour then led to Excursions to the Provinces, where, with the cooperation of local cultural groups, discussions were held between the Association's members and young people outside Thessaloniki who wrote and had literary interests.
(photos 03,04 and 05)

Foreseeing that unrestrained exploitation of intellectual products would in future lead litterateurs to unfair choices and forced compromises, the Board of Trustees (photo 06) decided to organise a Panhellenic Literary Conference on Royalties in cooperation with the Associated Literary Societies in Athens, eventually holding it in Thessaloniki on 3 December 1981.
The three-day activities and discussions attended by almost all the important literary figures of the time and many exceptional legal minds, most notably Professor George Koumantos, bore fruit: the findings of the conference later served as the basis for today's legislative framework on intellectual rights. (photos 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 )
After this crowning event, the Association continued, within the scope of its activities and operation, to plan events in an attempt to enhance the knowledge and cultivation of the public and to broaden its members' cognitive and creative horizons.
It was with this in mind that it decided to work together with the city's municipal government for the celebration of the 2300 years that had elapsed from Thessaloniki's inception. This collaboration involved a programme of talks that would be given by the Association's members at the central and district public libraries, which proved to be fruitful and beneficial. A large number of colleagues spoke on a variety of topics and concerns regarding literature, which -as indicated by attendance at these talks- were of interest to the general public. (photos 13,14,15,16,17,18)

Endeavours such as the leading workshop for reading Ancient Greek texts as well as that involving high-school pupils who write, were two significant activities carried out in recent years.
Before his passing in 1986, Christos Sartzetakis -then President of the Republic- visited the Association's premises. A visit such as this, by the state's highest authority, was not without significance. It was a sign not only of the recognition the Association had already achieved nationwide, but also of the official acceptance and confirmation of its historic role (photos 19,20,21). In the meantime the Association had received significant injections of new blood. It was in the late eighties, at a time when other forces with alien pursuits were clearly infiltrating the literary sphere, for some time having put a hesitant foot forward, but now taking the form of an avalanche.
This matter raised much concern within the Boards of Trustees and was often the key item on their agenda. The discussions held and the efforts made to analyse these never-before-encountered events led to the conclusion that any protective measures taken should not engender conflict with whatever was threatening to alter the literary sphere, but should rather take the form of a stronger and clearer perception and deeper understanding of the role and function of the litterateur. It was thus decided to add Internal Meetings to the Association's existing activities, as a type of workshop in which its members could discuss hot issues concerning their art.
Many important steps were taken over the last decade that are worth highlighting and naming. (photo 22). The Association, always shunning the facile and the haphazard, tackled -together with the Latin Literature Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki- the difficult task of presenting Latin literary texts referring to Macedonia in a conference titled Cicero and Thessaloniki. (photo 23). The much beleaguered matter of literary pensions, which has concerned the Association from its inception to this day, has in the past decade been a continuous battleground, given that every now and then new laws or proposed social insurance legislation come to trouble the waters by withdrawing or refuting the right of writers to receive a meagre compensation for all that they have contributed throughout their lifetime to the country's culture and to the cultivation of its people. (photos 24, 25).
Another noteworthy event is the commencement of the TWA's publishing activities in 1998. Deeming it necessary that major works written by past members of the Association are read once more -these books being rare or hard to find and there being no chance that they would be reprinted in the present best-seller-afflicted climate- the Board of Directors decided to reprint these works, beginning with Δυο Μορφές της Λογοτεχνίας: Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης και Νίκος Καζαντζάκης (Two Literary Figures: Alexandros Papadiamantis and Nikos Kazantzakis) by Petros S. Spandonides and Κασσανδρινή Ακτή (Cassandrian Coast) by Yiorgos Delios.
In recent years, the Association has regularly worked together with the National Book Centre, participating in the International Book Fair held in Thessaloniki to exhibit and present its publications.

Last of the activities mentioned is the revision of the Association's statutes, which took place in June 2002 and was approved by means of Decision 30812/02 of the Thessaloniki Court of First Instance. The revision had for long been necessary since the original statutes were not able to deal with needs that had occurred over time and which mainly concerned the care and running of the Association's premises as well as other problems that had arisen over the years, but which could not have been foreseen forty years ago.

The Thessaloniki Writers' Association is like a large, colourful mosaic spanning the past 45 years. To see this, one only has to take a quick look at the records of the meetings held by the Boards of Trustees. Naturally, it is not the volume and bulk of these minutes that are impressive, but rather the wealth of information on the constant, ongoing struggle to promote literature and to achieve its recognition, as well as to safeguard and protect the rights of the Association's members and of writers in general.