AI, IALA to host book reading, discussion with author Shahé Mankerian

“No one / tasted the difference between glass / shards and sugar beads / piercing the bloated belly / of brioches.”

Join the Armenian Institute and the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 5 pm GMT / 12 pm EST / 9 am PST / 9 pm EVN for a reading and discussion with author Shahé Mankerian. The virtual discussion will be led by Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian.

Mankerian’s critically-acclaimed debut collection History of Forgetfulness takes readers to 1975 Beirut, where an un-civil war is brewing. Mankerian asks, “Who said war didn’t love / the children?” setting the tone for a darkly humorous collection in which memories of love, religion and childhood are entangled amongst street snipers and the confusion of misguided bombings. 

Ron Koertge writes, “Shahé Mankerian never leaves a reader un-engaged.” Poet Laureate Emerita Thelma Reyna writes, “A survivor of the Lebanese civil war in the late 20th century, Mankerian unspools in devastating simplicity and directness, in seemingly inconsequential scenes, the horrors and suffering of children, parents, neighbors, schoolmates, friends, lovers navigating daily bombardments, scavenging for food, dodging snipers’ bullets, and trying to find a modicum of normalcy among the ruins.”

Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School and IALA’s director of mentorship.

History of Forgetfulness has been a finalist at the Bibby First Book Competition, the Crab Orchard Poetry Open Competition, the Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Award and the White Pine Press Poetry Prize.

Dr. Tchilingirian is a sociologist and an associate of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, specializing in Armenian and Middle Eastern Studies, with a particular focus on identity politics, religion and homeland-diaspora relations.

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