Inch Press launches new zine to bring Armenian literature to English-speaking readers
Inch, a new quarterly literary zine, launches with a mission to bring Western Armenian literature to English-speaking readers through high-quality literary translation. Each issue is devoted to a single story—carefully chosen and thoughtfully translated—allowing readers to focus on its full emotional and cultural range.
Founded by writer and translator Garen Torikian, Inch is dedicated to presenting Armenian stories in all their multifaceted depth: satirical, surreal, lyrical and everything in between. “So much Armenian literature exists beyond the historical or tragic lens through which it’s often filtered. I started Inch to share stories that are sharp, funny, strange, intimate—stories that reveal how richly varied Armenian writing is.”
The debut issue features a sharp, satirical piece by Yervant Odian, a tale of delusion and trickery, revolving around the creation of a new dictionary. True to Inch’s mission, the translation doesn’t merely replicate the story across languages: it creates a space where translators are visible and valued as literary artists, bringing their interpretive choices and cultural insight to the forefront.
“While I have been moved while reading and translating other works of Armenian literature, I cannot say I have often been entertained in the most basic sense of the word,” says translator Jennifer Manoukian. “Armenian literature does not always need to be heavy or didactic. It can also bring some laughter and lightness to a reader’s day. Odian’s work does just that.”
Supported by a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Inch publishes both celebrated and emerging voices, with the aim of fostering connection within the Armenian diaspora and beyond.
Garen Torikian is a fiction writer, essayist and translator from Western Armenian into English. His writing has appeared in Wasafiri, Guernica, Electric Literature, Nexus, Potomac Review and SPEAK. In 2021, he edited Mo(a)t, an anthology of contemporary Arabic stories in translation. He has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University in April 2022, and an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia.
To purchase a copy of Inch, or learn more about the publication, please visit https://inch.press
