Patricia Volonakis Davis

Patricia V. Davis holds a MFA in Creative Writing and Education. She is permanently certified by the State of New York to teach upper grade English. She has taught extensively in private and public high schools in The United States, teaching reading and writing skills to lower-proficiency, bilingual teens in New York City, as well as teaching English as a Foreign Language to pupils of various ages and backgrounds in the United States and in Greece. In 1982, she was recruited by the Deputy Administrator of Puerto Rico to help him prepare for his speeches in English and to coordinate the English language instruction of the employees of the Economic Development Administration of Puerto Rico. She has conducted many workshops for parents and educators on teaching children to become better readers and on solutions to behaviour problems in adolescents. As a result of her work in New York City, Rudolph Giuliani and Herman Badillo visited her classroom and Patricia was then invited to sit on the mayor-elect’s Transition Team’s Education Committee. In 1995, Patricia emigrated to Athens, Greece where she founded an education service, Serafim Books, named for “a good book is like a guardian angel.” Serafim Books imported books and educational materials from The United States and The United Kingdom into Greece and Patricia conducted workshops and seminars on how to utilise these new materials, not only in the foreign community English-language schools, but in the Greek national schools, as well. At the Serafim Books learning centre, literary events, the first of their kind in Greece, were widely attended by pupils, educators and parents of all backgrounds. Serafim Books gained international acclaim for its dedication to education and its philanthropic work with organisations such as Make-A-Wish Greece chapter, TESOL Greece and TESOL Macedonia Thrace. During this time, Scholastic Inc. and Scholastic UK, publishers of children’s books and educational materials, appointed Patricia their exclusive representative of Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. Patricia returned to The United States in 2002 to pursue a fulltime writing career. Her essays, opinion articles and celebrity interviews have appeared in various newspapers and magazines nationally and internationally. She is the author of “If This Woman is Being Operated Recklessly” which appeared alongside Laurence Ferlinghetti's work in New Press magazine and other published poems on women’s issues. Her memoir “Harlot's Sauce”---A Memoir of Love, Loss, Food, Family and Greece, about her time spent in Greece as a foreign woman living amongst the Greek people and running an international business, has just been completed.