Sarkisian Workshop Series returns with Peter Balakian

The International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) and Mizna invite you to the second part of the Sarkisian Workshop Series featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Peter Balakian. The virtual two-hour workshop, “Poems that Ingest the Difficult World,” will take place on Sept. 20, 2026, at 9 a.m. Pacific | noon Eastern | 8 p.m. Armenia time. How can poems take on the difficult world — mass violence, social upheaval, the ordinary daily flow of dysfunction and cruelty — and still maintain the necessary depth and complexity the poem demands as a work of literary imagination? Our seminar will explore poets who have made powerful and aesthetically rich work as they have navigated the difficult world. We will discuss how these poems speak to us across time and place and make demands on our own poems. Peter Balakian is the author of nine books of poems including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ozone Journal. His memoir “Black Dog of Fate” won the PEN/Albrand Award, and “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response” was a New York Times bestseller. Balakian’s work has been translated into many languages, and he teaches at Colgate University. A Recommended Read “Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture,” by Peter Balakian Ticket price: $20 – general admission; $16 – IALA Members Purchase your tickets here. The Sarkisian Workshop Series 2026: Can Storytelling Save Us? is brought to you by IALA and Mizna. Funded by the Sarkisian Foundation for the Arts and Engineering, the series offers six writing workshops that include literary analysis and generative writing exercises. Designed to bring together writers from diverse backgrounds, these workshops will encourage writers to engage with the pressing issues of our time. Workshop facilitators this season also include Sarah Aziza and Nur Turkmani. Explore the full series and read along with it by purchasing titles at IALA’s Bookshop.org storefront. This workshop series is produced by the International Armenian Literary Alliance, a global literary platform that supports and celebrates writers and translators by fostering the development and distribution of Armenian literature in the English language, and in translation. Through mentorship, grants, readings, discussions and more, IALA unites and uplifts Armenian writers and fosters intercultural exchange. Partnering organizations Mizna: Since 1999, Mizna has promoted experimental approaches to art, literature and film; work that questions and expands the forms and conceptual frameworks of Arab and SWANA culture. The Sarkisian Foundation for the Arts and Engineering supports students and institutions that seek to advance ideas which elevate innovative critical thinking, design and realization of the work. The foundation provides scholarships and grants in the arts and engineering, specifically visual arts, liberal arts, architecture and performing arts.

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