Aida Zilelian publishes debut chapbook “Dissonance”
Winner of Swan Scythe’s 2024 poetry contest, Aida Zilelian’s debut poetry chapbook, Dissonance, is an autobiographical discovery that touches upon her Armenian history, childhood, the first-generation experience and ventures into the tides of adulthood and broken love.
Praise for Zilelian’s poetry
“Dissonance is a collection of people and place stories. Zilelian’s poetry fuses Armenian bodies, diaspora, culture, prayers and experiences. Her imagery and language splattered with Armenian tongue and testimonio; readers see and witness, ‘An immigrant’s daughter of ravines. / And wheat fields, cadaver skies… // Black halter dress, my lips wine red,’ Zilelian scribes the violence, displacement, and survival of a people and places us in her diaspora. Dissonance represents a series of moments, Bucharest, Chelsea, the Black Sea, Sunken Meadow Beach. Zilelian gives readers truth and hope. Her collection is a ‘galaxy of consternations.’ Read Dissonance slowly, and ‘bite the sun.”’ —Allia Abdullah-Matta, Poet/Professor of English, CUNY LaGuardia
“Aida Zilelian’s artful deconstructions of her personal and familial and Armenian ancestral identities are fierce yet tender examinations that mine with imagination’s hammer and sketch across time’s palisades in search of answers. Inside these poems are formidable collisions of love and an undeniable desire that holds up to the light all that can disappear in a life. Dissonance is a stirring debut collection of poetry from a notable novelist deserving of recognition and rereading.” —Alan Semerdjian, In the Architecture of Bone, 9th poet laureate of New York’s Nassau County
“Aida Zilelian, like all master wordsmiths, weaves her poems into the reader’s heart—clenching it, caressing it, then letting each line, each stanza, seep into the bloodstream, disarming yet alarming with haunting images. Her heartbreak chisels away until yours begins to crack—only to mend it again. That is the power of Zilelian’s voice—it doesn’t just tell a story; it takes root in the heart’s chambers and, like a migrant dweller seeking to create beauty, instinctively calls it home.” —Shahé Mankerian, History of Forgetfulness
Aida Zilelian is a first generation American-Armenian writer, educator and storyteller from Queens, New York. She is the author of the novels All the Ways We Lied and The Legacy of Lost Things, which received the Tololyan Literary Award. She has been performing at storytelling events in NYC, Boston, Montreal and Los Angeles. Zilelian has also been featured in the Huffington Post, NPR’s Takeaway, among other reading series and print outlets. Her short story collection These Hills Were Meant for You was shortlisted for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and her short story “The Piano” won first prize in the Lighthouse Weekly contest. Dissonance is her first poetry chapbook. Learn more about her work by visiting aidazilelian.com
Dissonance is set to release on June 15, 2025 by Swan Scythe Press. Read an excerpt, “To the Children, 1915,” and pre-order it here.
