The International Armenian Literary Alliance, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, 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.
Register to attend 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 at 9 a.m. PST.
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 online.
Authors featured on Literary Lights 2024:
- 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.” Available at: Bookshop.org, Abril Books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kew & Willow Books, and Astoria Bookshop. Learn more here.
- 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, and Kobo. Learn more here.
- 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, and Abril Books. Learn more here.
- 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, “Lost Words” 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, and Amazon. Learn more here.
- 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, and Amazon. Learn more here.
- 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, and Amazon.