Introducing IALA’s Newest Board Member

We are pleased and honored to introduce our newest Board of Directors member, Aida Zilelian!

Aida Zilelian is a first generation American-Armenian writer, educator and storyteller from Queens, NY. She is the author of The Legacy of Lost Things, recipient of the Tololyan Literary Award.  She has been performing at storytelling events in NYC, Boston, Montreal and Los Angeles. Aida 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. Her poem “The Escape Artist”,  finalist in the Sand Hills poetry contest, is forthcoming in the fall. She is currently working on completing Where There Can Be No Breath At All, a short story collection written through the perspective of diasporan Armenians.

Zilelian was the curator of Boundless Tales, one of the first and longest-running reading series in Queens, NY. She is on the Board of Directors of Newtown Literary, a Queens-based literary journal that supports emerging writers. In addition to being an inaugural IALA advisory board member, Zilelian has also served as a mentor for IALA’s annual mentorship program for the past four years and served as a judge for IALA’s first Creative Writing Grant. She was recently appointed as leader of IALA’s New York City Chapter. Learn more about her here.