Reading in Portland Oregon
BEYOND THE G-WORD: ARMENIAN AMERICAN
WRITERS IN HYBRID
THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 2019 7:00 – 8:00 PM
ANOTHER READ THROUGH BOOKSTORE
3932 N MISSISSIPPI AVE, PORTLAND, OR
Armenian-American writers have long written about trauma as a means of social justice. Their resistance to oppression, including that of the current political moment, also expresses liberation. Through intersectional lenses of gender, sexual orientation, class, and race, Armenian-American poets/writers read work that addresses immigration, diaspora, exile, and war. This event centers Armenians' liminal position between East and West, and poc and white, challenging the “single story” of the Armenian genocide of 1915. With roots in Lebanon, Armenia, and Syria, these writers share works of hybridity that reflect and celebrate their diverse, multi-faceted lives.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arminé Iknadossian immigrated to the United States in 1974 to escape the civil war. She earned her MFA from Antioch University. Iknadossian is the author of the chapbook United States of Love & Other Poems (2015) and All That Wasted Fruit (Main Street Rag). She teaches and writes in Long Beach, California ✸Nancy Agabian is the author of Princess Freak, a poetry/performance collection, and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, a memoir. Her novel, The Fear of Large and Small Nations, was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. She teaches writing at NYU ✸Lory Bedikian’s The Book of Lamenting won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She has an MFA from the University of Oregon. Her work was a finalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and for the AROHO’s Orlando Prize. She received a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial fund ✸Shahé Mankerian's poetry collection, History of Forgetfulness, has been a finalist for the Bibby First Book Award, the Crab Orchard Series, the Quercus Award, and the White Pine Press Competition. He is the co-director of the L.A. Writing Project and the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School ✸Lola Koundakjian has authored two poetry books and read in four international poetry festivals in Quebec, Peru, Colombia and West Bank. She co-curates the Zohrab Center's poetry reading series in midtown Manhattan, and runs the Armenian Poetry Project in multiple languages and audio ✸Verónica Pamoukaghlián is a Uruguayan film producer at her company Nektar Films and a nonfiction editor for Washington´s Sutton Hart Press. Her writing has appeared in THE ARMENIAN POETRY PROJECT, THE ACENTOS REVIEW, THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC REVIEW, PRISM, NAKED PUNCH, SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY, AND THE ARMENIAN WEEKLY
