Literary Lights 2024: A Reading Series Featuring New Works by Armenian Authors

The International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA), the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center will host Literary Lights 2024, their second annual monthly reading series featuring new works of literature by Armenian authors. Each event—held online—will feature a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members.

Keep an eye on IALA’s website and socials for the exact dates of each event. Click here to read along with the series by purchasing titles from IALA’s online bookstore powered by Bookshop.

the launch of Literary Lights 2024 featuring Tololyan Literary Prize recipient Aida Zilelian, author of All the Ways We Lied. Zilelian will be joined by Nancy Agabian, author of Princess Freak (2000), Me as Her Again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (2008) and the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction finalist, The Fear of Large and Small Nations (2023). The event will take place on Zoom on January 27, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern.

By turns heartfelt and heart-wrenching, All the Ways We Lied introduces a cast of tragically flawed but lovable characters on the brink of unraveling. With humor and compassion, this spellbinding tale explores the fraught and contradictory landscape of sisterhood, introducing four unforgettable women who have nothing in common, and are bound by blood and history. Learn more about the novel and author.

Authors featured on Literary Lights 2024:

All the Ways We Lied by Aida Zilelian

Tololyan Literary Prize recipient Aida Zilelian explores the reality of love and loss in the everyday lives of a modern-day Armenian family in her forthcoming novel, All the Ways We Lied.

The Prospectors by Ariel Djanikian

Selected by Barnes & Noble as their book-of-the-month for October, Ariel Djanikian’s newly-released The Prospectors is a sweeping rags-to-riches story of survival and greed across American history following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush.

Available at: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | HarperCollins | Kobo. Learn more here.

BÁBO by Astrid Kamalyan and Anait Semirdzhyan

Join Tato and her family as they help Bábo (grandmother) on rug-washing day in this sweet and playful picture book tribute to Armenian cultural traditions. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection that has earned starred reviews from Kirkus, The Horn Book and Publishers Weekly, Bábo was selected as one of the New York Public Library’s 2023 Best Books for Kids.

Available at: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Penguin Random House | Abril Books. Learn more here.

Lost Words by Leila Boukarim and Sona Avedikian

What is it like to walk away from your home? To leave behind everything and everyone you’ve ever known? Poetic, sensitive and based on a true family history, this picture book follows a young Armenian boy from the day he sets out to find refuge to the day he finally finds the courage to share his story.

Preorder at: Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon. Learn more here.

The Palace of Forty Pillars by Armen Davoudian

Wry, tender and formally innovative, Armen Davoudian’s forthcoming debut poetry collection, The Palace of Forty Pillars, tells the story of a self estranged from the world around him as a gay adolescent, an Armenian in Iran and an immigrant in America.

Preorder at: Tin House | Powell’s | Bookshop | Amazon. Learn more here.

Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body by Lory Bedikian

Winner of the 2023 Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body builds a eulogy in poems, claiming loss, the body’s failure, often interrupted with monologues and rants. The voice is that of a daughter of immigrant parents from Lebanon and Syria, of Armenian descent, now gone.

Preorder at: Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon.

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International Armenian Literary Alliance

The International Armenian Literary Alliance is a nonprofit organization launched in 2021 that supports and celebrates writers by fostering the development and distribution of Armenian literature in the English language. A network of Armenian writers and their champions, IALA gives Armenian writers a voice in the literary world through creative, professional, and scholarly advocacy.