Olivia Katrandjian Named 2021 Creative Armenia-AGBU Fellow

IALA President and Founder Olivia Katrandjian has been named one of Creative Armenia-AGBU 2021 Fellows.

In an announcement this month, Creative Armenia revealed their newest cohort of Fellows to receive generous support including funding, mentorship, industry connections, and promotion uniquely designed to each artist.

Joining Katrandjian are bass player and composer Noah Garabedian (USA); curator Nairi Khatchadourian (Armenia); filmmaker and writer Emily Mkrtichian (USA); musician and composer Bei Ru (USA); media artist and landscape architect Aroussiak Gabrielian (USA); and illustrator and animator Arevik d’Or (Belgium).

This is the third year that Creative Armenia and AGBU have partnered to offer these fellowships. Creative Armenia is a global arts foundation for the Armenian people that discovers, develops, and champions innovative talents across the arts.

“We are proud of these incredible artists. They represent the wide range and depth of creativity that Armenians have to offer the world.”

AGBU Central Board Member Ani Manoukian

Katrandjian is an Armenian-American writer and journalist with a background in print reporting and documentary filmmaking. She has worked in Thailand, Armenia, and New York, and her reporting has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, PBS, ABC News, the Huffington Post, the Bergen Record, and Quartz, among other outlets.

In 2016, she moved to Luxembourg to write The Ghost Soldier, a historical novel based on the Ghost Army, a top-secret group of artists who used inflatable tanks, sound effects, and fake radio transmissions to deceive the Germans in the Second World War. The manuscript was awarded second place in the National Literary Prize of Luxembourg in 2019.

In 2020, Olivia was longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize. She is currently pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing at Oxford University.

Read more about the Fellowship program at Creative Armenia.