Olympia Kiriakou

Dr. Olympia Kiriakou is a film historian who specializes in stardom, gender, and genre in classical Hollywood. She is the author of Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2020), the only scholarly study about the titular actress’s evolving star persona and career. She is currently writing the first-ever biography about actress Virginia Grey for the University Press of Kentucky.

Olympia is also the host of The Screwball Story, a podcast dedicated to Hollywood’s zaniest genre, screwball comedy. Her writing has appeared in publications like Sight and Sound, MUBI’s Notebook, Cineaste, The Saturday Evening Post and many more. Olympia admits that she is a Disney adult, but she put her obsession to good use: she’s taught an undergraduate-level course called “The World of Disney,” and has also written about the Disney theme parks for such outlets as Intellect Books, Journal of Fandom Studies, and In Media Res.

You can follow Olympia on Twitter (she refuses to call it X) and Instagram. She is available for writing commissions, interviews, and public appearances and can best be reached via e-mail (click ‘contact’ or the icon in the header).