Margarita Karapanou was born in Athens, Greece, the daughter of novelist and dramatist Margarita Liberaki and Giorgos Karapanos, a lawyer and poet. Her parents divorced and her mother moved to Paris shortly after she was born.^[2] Karapanou grew up in both Athens, with her maternal grandmother, and with her mother in Paris.^[5][6] She studied philosophy and cinema in Paris, and nursery school teaching through distance education in London. In Paris, she was friends with Marie-France Ionesco, the daughter of Eugène Ionesco.^[6]

Karapanou worked as a nursery school teacher and also at a private kindergarten.^[7] She struggled with bipolar disorder throughout her life.^[1][8]

Kassandra and the Wolf was translated into English by Nikos C. Germanacos and published by Harcourt Brace in 1976 before it was published in Greece.^[8]

Her own translation into French of her 1985 novel The Sleepwalker won the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger in 1988.

Her diaries, Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη: Ημερολόγια 1959-1979 (Life Is Wildly Improbable: Diaries 1959-1979), were published in November 2008, shortly before she died of respiratory problems on 2 December 2008.

Novels

• Η Κασσάνδρα και ο Λύκος [Hē Kassandra kai ho lykos] (Hermēs, 1977). Kassandra and the Wolf, trans. Nikos C. Germanacos (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976; Clockroot, 2009).
• Ο υπνοβάτης [Ho hypnovatēs] (Hermēs, 1985). The Sleepwalker, trans. Karen Emmerich (Clockroot, 2011).
• Rien ne va plus (Hermēs, 1991). Trans. Karen Emmerich (Clockroot, 2009).
• Ναι [Nai] (Ōkeanida, 1999). Yes.
• Lee και Lou [Lee kai Lou] (Ōkeanida, 2003). Lee and Lou.
• Μαμά (Ōkeanida, 2004). Mama.

Other

• Μήπως; [Mēpōs?] (Ōkeanida, 2006). Maybe? Conversations with psychologist and writer Fotini Tsalikoglou.
• Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη [Ī zōī́ eínai agríōs apíthanī́] (Ōkeanida, 2008). Life Is Wildly Improbable: Diaries 1959-1979 (Edited by Vassilis Kimoulis)

In anthologies

• "The hour of the Wolf". In Rotter, P. (1975). Bitches & sad ladies: An anthology of fiction by and about women. New York: Harper's Magazine Press. ISBN 9780061275159
• "Word". in Biguenet, J. (1978). Foreign fictions: 25 contemporary stories from Canada, Europe, Latin America. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 9780394724935
• "Kassandra" and "The Wolf". In Manguel, A. (1993). The gates of paradise: The anthology of erotic short fiction. New York: C. Potter. ISBN 9780517880500
• "Kalymnos". In Leontis, A. (1997). Greece: A traveler's literary companion. San Francisco, Calif: Whereabouts Press. ISBN 9781883513047
• "Island Melancholy" (2008). Mediterranean Passages: Readings from Dido to Derrida. University of North Carolina Press ISBN 9780807831830

• Friar, K. (1977). "Book Review: Kassandra and the Wolf". World Literature Today, 51(2), 316-317. (JSTOR Arts & Sciences V Collection) ISSN 0196-3570
• Bryfonski, D. (1980). Contemporary literary criticism: Volume 13. Detroit, Mich: Gale Research. ISBN 9780810301245
• Hohlfelder, C. A. (1997). Modes of expression and representation in modern Greek women's prose from 1938-1987. [Columbus] : Ohio State University. OCLC 38109068
• Adamopoulos, A., & Karapanou, M. (introduction). (1999). Psémata páli. Athi̲na: Ekd. Agra. ISBN 9789603253075
• Tsalikoglou, Phōteinē (2008). De m'agapas, m'agapas : ta paraxena tēs mētrikēs agapēs ; ta grammata tēs Margaritas Lymperakē stēn korē tēs Margarita Karapanou (1ē ekd. ed.). Athēna: Ekdoseis Kastaniōtē. ISBN 978-9600348378.
• Bogdanou, C. (2004). Revisioning Cassandra: Defying daughters and master narratives in Florence Nightingale's "Cassandra" and Margarita Karapanou's Kassandra and the wolf. OCLC 54444553
• Hembree, B. (2011). "Book Review: The Sleepwalker". World Literature Today, 85(4), 65-66. (JSTOR Current Scholarship Journals). ISSN 0196-3570
• Kotsovili, E. (2012). Giving an account of herself: Life-writing in Maro Douka, Rea Galanaki and Margarita Karapanou. University of Oxford & St. Cross College (University of Oxford). OCLC 863584651
• Theodosatou, V. (2013). Aselēnois nyxi: G. Vizyēnos, M. Karapanou, G. Cheimōnas : treis psychanalytikes anagnōseis. Ασελήνοις νυξί : Γ. Βιζυηνός, Μ. Καραπάνου, Γ. Χειμωνάς : τρεις ψυχαναλυτικές αναγνώσεις. ISBN 9786188018655
• Nigianni, B. (2015). "Geographies of Affectivity in the Writings of Margarita Karapanou: Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Interpretations". English Academy Review, 32(1), 96-108. doi: 10.1080/10131752.2015.1034948
• Athanasiou-Krikelis, L. (2016). "Twisting the Story: Margarita Karapanou’s Rien ne va plus and Amanda Michalopoulou’s Θα ήθελα as Metaautobiographical Novels". Journal of Modern Greek Studies. doi: 10.1353/mgs.2016.0018

• Her page at the website of the Hellenic Authors' Society (Greek)
• A page at the National Book Centre of Greece