Alki Zei (Άλκη Ζέη) is a contemporary Greek children’s writer.

Alki Zei was born in Athens in 1925. Her father came from the island of Crete, and her mother from the island of Samos. Zei spent her childhood on the island of Samos. While still a secondary school student, she began writing plays for puppet theater. One of the characters she created at that time under the name “Tuhly” (Greek: “ο Κλούβιος”) later became the main character of the Athens puppet theater “Uncle Mitousis” (Greek: “Μπάρμπα Μυτούσης”).

She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Athens and the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory. She married the theater writer and director Giorgos Sevastikoglou. Her husband, a participant in the Greek Resistance and later in the Greek Civil War of 1946–1949, left the country in 1949 together with units of the Democratic Army and found political asylum in the Soviet Union. Alki Zei also left the country to join her husband. She first spent some time in Italy, where she studied with Eduardo De Filippo. She later wrote about this period of her life in Moscow in the essay “My Teacher Eduardo De Filippo.” In 1954, via France, she managed to go to the USSR. After living briefly in Tashkent, Zei moved with her husband to Moscow, where she graduated from the S. A. Gerasimov All-Russian State University of Cinematography, Faculty of Directing.

In 1964 she returned to Greece with her family.

Later, she continued writing, publishing a number of stories in the youth magazine Youth Voice, whose editorial staff included Marios Ploritis, Tasos Lignadis, and Kostis Skalioras.

She first appeared in Greek literature in 1963, even before returning to the country, with the novel Tiger in the Shop Window, which became a milestone in Greek children’s literature, as it was the first to introduce political issues to young readers. It was a historical novel set during the years of the dictatorship of General Metaxas.

With the establishment of the military