IALA’s 2025 mentorship program supports a new cohort of emerging Armenian writers
This year, the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) is excited to welcome its new class of mentees for its fifth annual mentorship program, which will run until August 31, 2025. Participants will work on poetry, fiction and nonfiction.
IALA’s 2025 mentee cohort includes Milena Abrahamyan, Robert Nazar Arjoyan, Georgi Bargamian, Nanore Barsoumian, Marie Davtyan, Aline Keledjian, Armenak Menechyan, Elina Mir, E.C. Salibian, Siranush Sargsyan, Judith Saryan, Mariam Vahradyan and Karin Vosgueritchian.
To help the selected writers hone their craft, 13 published Armenian authors are serving as mentors—some of whom were mentees of the program earlier. They will read and provide feedback on their mentee’s writing and speak virtually with their mentee throughout the program to discuss the writing life, the mentee’s work and how to navigate the publishing industry. At the end of the program, IALA will host an Emerging Writers Showcase to feature the mentees’ work.
The IALA 2025 mentors are Nancy Agabian, Sylvia Angelique Alajaji, Haig Chahinian, Talar Chahinian, Tina Demirdjian, Arminé Iknadossian, Arthur Kayzakian, Nancy Kricorian, Arthur Nersesian, Gina Srmabekian, Alene Terzian-Zeitounian, Lori Yeghiayan Friedman and Aida Zilelian.
“Mentors are an invaluable resource to emerging writers, not only in giving feedback on work, but in providing encouragement and guidance in what’s otherwise an often solitary practice. Persistence is vital to a writer’s journey, and we pair our mentees with authors who believe in their power to create, inspiring them to persevere through inevitable periods of self-doubt,” says IALA’s Founder, Olivia Katrandjian. “We hope that bonds between our mentors and mentees will last beyond the length of the program and transform into mutually supportive relationships that will only strengthen our writers and the Armenian literary community.”
The mentees of IALA’s 2025 mentorship program
Milena Abrahamyan is a queer feminist from Armenia, part of civic movements in the region, and a collaborator on feminist art and projects that aim to build trust and solidarity among diverse communities across borders and divides.
Robert Nazar Arjoyan was born into the Armenian diaspora of Los Angeles. Aside from an arguably ill-advised foray into rock ’n’ roll bandery during his late teens, literature and movies were the vying forces of his life. Arjoyan graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and now works as an author and filmmaker. You can read his stories in Maudlin House, The Deadlands, Ghoulish Tales, Cleaver Magazine, Hobart, Roi Fainéant, Apocalypse Confidential, JMWW, Gone Lawn, The Hooghly Review and River Styx, with more on the way. Find him at www.arjoyan.com or on socials @RobertArjoyan.
Georgi Bargamian is a freelance writer of news, opinion and poetry focusing on themes of loss, longing, identity and heritage. She resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Nanore Barsoumian is a Boston-based writer and researcher. She was editor of The Armenian Weekly (2014–2016) and assistant editor (2010–2014), reporting from Armenia, Artsakh and Turkey. She holds B.A. degrees in Political Science and English and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution. Her research on social identities in genocide commemorations in Turkey appears in After the Ottomans: Genocide’s Long Shadow and Armenian Resilience (I.B. Tauris, 2023). In 2023, she joined NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Studies, focusing on Armenian genocide denial at the UN. She is currently working on her debut novel about belonging and self-invention. Read more at www.nanorebarsoumian.com
Marie Davtyan is a writer based in Yerevan with a background in linguistics. Her professional writing has focused on tech and digital communication, but recently, she has returned to creative work with a focus on lyric and prose poetry. Her writing explores how language can hold space for memory, loss and emotional transformation. She is working on her first poetry collection, examining the ways language can carry both personal memory and shared experience. She’s grounded by quiet routines and time in nature and connects most deeply through listening and engaging in meaningful, extended conversations.
Aline Keledjian is a recent graduate of George Washington University with a B.A. in International Affairs and History. She is a firm believer in the power of storytelling as a tool to strengthen understanding in oneself and in community. This belief forms the core of her poetry. Inspired by the stories she listened to as a child from her Beirutsi and Halebtsi family members, Aline’s poetry empowers readers to celebrate the history within us all.
Armenak Menechyan is a learner and truth seeker from Los Angeles. He loves to spend his free time being carried by the warm embrace of mother nature and believes strongly in the power of human connection and the common thread that runs through us all. His inspirations include learning, writing, activism, music, dancing, love, the human mind, ancient contemplative practices and his puppy Coconut, as well as the collective capacity for goodness.
Elina Mir, originally from Yerevan, Armenia, is a writer and abstract artist based in California. She is the author of four books and the novel Unraveling, known for exploring themes of pain, hope and the human condition. Her work—both written and visual—is experimental and emotionally driven. She is also active in the Armenian creative community, holding roles in national writers’ and artists’ associations. Learn more at elinamir.com
E.C. Salibian is a nonfiction writer whose work has appeared in The Sun, Cutleaf Journal, Fourth Genre, Ararat and other publications. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Siranush Sargsyan is a freelance journalist from Artsakh, now based in Armenia, covering human rights, politics and women’s experiences in conflict zones. Her work appears in BBC, Newsweek, New Lines Magazine, Open Democracy, Hyperallergic and The Armenian Weekly. With degrees in history and political science and as a Tavitian Scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, she brings deep insight to her reporting on forcibly displaced Armenians. She focuses on amplifying the voices of those affected by conflict and displacement, combining academic rigor with on-the-ground storytelling.
Judith Saryan is the daughter and granddaughter of Armenian Genocide survivors. She is on the Advisory Board of Facing History and Ourselves and the board of NAASR, the leading scholarly institution supporting Armenian studies and research in the U.S. Along with her colleagues at AIWA, the Armenian International Women’s Association, she introduced the work of the groundbreaking author Zabel Yessayan to English-speaking audiences. She has given talks to secondary and college students, enabling active engagement and understanding of genocide and its continuation today. She is also a citizen scientist at Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
Mariam Vahradyan holds a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was awarded the Christopher Peterson Memorial Fellowship. She is the co-founder of Kaitzak, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering a healthy and interconnected global diaspora. Her research and writing explore narrative and meaning-making within diaspora communities, and her work has been published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, The Armenian Weekly, EVN Report, Seeing Happy and HyePhen Magazine. She has also presented her research at international conferences, including UNIS-UN at the United Nations General Assembly.
Karin Vosgueritchian lives in Berkeley, California, where she works in the public sector. She was born in Aleppo, Syria to a Lebanese-Armenian father and a Greek-Syrian mother, and grew up in the Southern Californian suburbs. She enjoys learning about languages, theater and history.
The mentors of IALA’s 2025 mentorship program
Nancy Agabian is the author of The Fear of Large and Small Nations, a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction and the Foreword Indies Prize in Multicultural Fiction, published by Nauset Press in 2023. Her previous books include Princess Freak (Beyond Baroque Books), a collection of poetry and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (Aunt Lute Books), a memoir. In 2021, she was awarded Lambda Literary Foundation’s Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. She is currently working on a personal essay collection, Mouthfuls, which uses lenses of dementia, caregiving and grief to find hope and perseverance during times of pandemic, war and genocide.
Sylvia Angelique Alajaji is the author of Music and the Armenian Diaspora: Searching for Home in Exile. She was most recently Professor of Music at Franklin & Marshall College and is currently serving as associate director of the CNRS-UChicago International Research Center for Fundamental Discovery at the University of Chicago.
Haig Chahinian is an independent career counselor whose writing has been published in O The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times and Los Angeles Review of Books. His solo show Best. Dad. NEVER. is running at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles this June. Stage and Cinema calls the piece “quietly revolutionary: a man rewriting the script for what fatherhood can look like today.” Keep an eye at BestDadNEVER.com for details and additional dates.
Talar Chahinian holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA and lectures in the Program for Armenian Studies at UC Irvine, where she is also Visiting Faculty in the Department of Comparative Literature. She is the author of the award-winning book, Stateless: The Politics of the Armenian Language in Exile (Syracuse University Press, 2023). Along with Tsolin Nalbantian and Sossie Kasbarian, she is the co-editor of The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power: Collective Identity in the Transnational 20th Century (Bloomsbury Press, 2023). She co-edits Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies and contributes regularly to the literary magazine Pakin.PIN IT
Tina Demirdjian is a poet who has taught in schools, museums, businesses and libraries for 30 years in Los Angeles. She is a culture bearer and founder of the Armenian Dress & Textile Project. She has received grants from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Durfee Foundation and California Council for the Humanities. Demirdjian is published in various journals and is author of IMPRINT and a contributor to Birthmark: a Bilingual Anthology of Armenian-American Poetry. She is a board member of Brand Associates, and is a co-collaborator of the art history and poetry workshop, ARTful Conversations at Brand Gallery.
Arminé Iknadossian was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Her family fled to California when she was four years old to escape the civil war. After graduating from UCLA, Iknadossian earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. The author of All That Wasted Fruit (Main Street Rag Press), Iknadossian’s work is included in XLA Anthology, Ruminate, Five South, Whale Road Review, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, MacQueen’s Quarterly and The American Journal of Poetry. She recently received a professional artists grant from the Arts Council of Long Beach. She has also received fellowships from Idyllwild Arts, The Los Angeles Writing Project and Otis College of Art and Design. She serves on IALA’s advisory board and is also one of the Tlaquilx poets for Project 1521.
Arthur Kayzakian is the winner of the 2021 inaugural Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series for his collection, The Book of Redacted Paintings, which was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is the recipient of the 2023 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He serves as poetry chair for IALA. His work has appeared in several publications, including The Adroit Journal, Portland Review, Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and Witness Magazine.
Nancy Kricorian, born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, is the author of four novels about the post-genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, adapted as a play and has been continuously in print since 1998. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale and New York University, as well as Teacher & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools and for the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia and the Anahid Literary Ward. She lives in New York City. Sign up for the author’s newsletter here.
Arthur Nersesian is the author of eight novels, including The Fuck-Up (Akashic, 1997 & MTV Books/Simon & Schuster, 1999), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic), Suicide Casanova (Akashic), dogrun (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster) and Unlubricated (HarperCollins). He is also the author of East Village Tetralogy, a collection of four plays. Nersesian was the managing editor of the literary magazine The Portable Lower East Side and was an English teacher at Hostos Community College (C.U.N.Y.) in the South Bronx. He was born and raised in New York City, and currently lives there.
Gina Srmabekian’s work grapples with transgenerational trauma, memory and identity. She writes toward her own freedom and that of all displaced peoples from Artsakh to Palestine and beyond. She writes about grief and in times of grief because it is the most powerful articulation of love. She is the winner of Ninth Letter’s Creative Nonfiction Prize and her work appears in DIAGRAM journal. She is a lecturer at California State University, Northridge, and lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Bailey.
Dr. Alene Terzian-Zeitounian is a globally minded leader, poet and educator with a deep commitment to advocacy and social justice. She currently serves as the Humanities Department Chair and teaches creative writing at College of the Canyons. She is also the faculty advisor of cul-de-sac, the campus’s award-winning literary and arts magazine. She holds an M.A. and an M.F.A. in creative writing, with a concentration in poetry, and a doctorate in Education, specializing in leadership and innovation. Her work has been featured in esteemed publications such as Bellevue Literary Review, Colorado Review, Mizna and Rise Up Review.
Lori Yeghiayan Friedman is a first-generation Armenian American from Los Angeles, California who now calls Portland, Oregon home. Her most recent work has appeared in Mizna, Atlas and Alice, Phoebe, Lost Balloon, Pithead Chapel, Memoir Land and the Los Angeles Times. Her writing has earned both Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She holds an MFA in Theater from UCSD and is the proud recipient of the 2024 IALA Creative Writing grant. Follow her on Instagram and Bluesky: @loriyeg
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 was a recipient of the Tololyan Literary Award. She has been performing at storytelling events in NYC, Boston, Montreal and Los Angeles. Zilelian has also been featured on NPR’s Takeaway and in the Huffington Post, 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.
