Natalia Theodoridou


Natalia Theodoridou is a Greek novelist, interactive fiction writer, and scholar. He was the fiction editor at sub-Q, an interactive fiction magazine. The magazine entered indefinite hiatus starting August 2020. As of 2025, as an interactive fiction writer he has been nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing four times.
WWW natalia-theodoridou.com

Biography

Early life and education

Theodoridou attended the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for his undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre. He subsequently attended the Royal Holloway, University of London in the United Kingdom, earning a Master of Research in drama studies, as well as a Master of Arts in religious studies at the University of Chicago in the United States, as part of the Fulbright Program.
He has a PhD in Media & Cultural Studies from the SOAS University of London. As part of his PhD, he spent fifteen months doing fieldwork in Indonesia researching Balinese dance. He has also graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop.

Career

Theodoridou's "The Birding: A Fairy Tale", published in Strange Horizons, was the winner of the 2018 World Fantasy Award for short fiction works. It is about a plague that turns nearly everyone in the world into birds. The work was also adapted into podcast format.
Theodoridou's debut novel, Sour Cherry, came out in April 2025 from and .

Style

Themes

In a 2025 interview with Clarkesworld, Theodoridou stated that the themes he emphasised in his writing were ones of "transformation, diaspora, gender feels, migration, violence personal and political, myths and fairy tales, intertextuality, queerness."

Awards

  • Greek Scientific Society Award, 2003
  • Scholarship by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation for undergraduate studies, 2002–2005
  • MA Studentship, 2007–2008
  • Fulbright Scholar, 2008–2010
  • SOAS Research Scholarship 2010–2013, & Additional Award for Fieldwork, 2010
  • Ouseley Memorial Scholarship, 2011–2013
  • World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction, 2018
  • Word Factory Apprentice Award, 2018
  • Emerging Writer Award, 2022

Poetry

  • "Blackmare"
  • "Ex Machina"
  • "Philomela in Seven Movements"
  • "An Inventory of Ghosts"