Born in 1953 in Athens, CECILE INGLESSIS MARGELLOS holds a diploma from the Institute of Political Sciences of Paris (Sciences-Po, 1975), a license in Sociology (Paris X Nanterre, 1975), and a Diplôme d’Études Supérieures (University of Geneva, 1997). She has worked for the Permanent Greek Delegations to the OECD in Paris and to the United Nations in Geneva, representing Greece to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and to the UNCTAD. Margellos is a scholar specializing in sixteenth-century French literature, a literary translator from and into Greek, French, English and ancient Greek, and a critic. She has translated fiction, poetry, and essays (Céline, Colette, Molière, Queneau, Perec, Dimoula, Cassin, Plato et al.), and she is a contributing writer and reviewer for a number of newspapers and literary magazines in Greece and abroad.

She has been married to Theodore Margellos since 1979, and they have a daughter, Iliodora, a Yale graduate and an artist. Theodore and Cecile have created a Yale scholarship for Greek or Ukrainian students in 2006, and have founded the Margellos World Republic of Letters within Yale University Press in 2007. In 2013, Cecile Inglessis Margellos was awarded the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic, and in 2014, the 2013 Greek National Translation Prize.