Meet IALA’s 2024 Israelyan English Translation Grant Recipients
We would like to thank everyone who submitted their work to IALA’s 2024 Israelyan English Translation Grant. This was our third year offering the grant, and we were grateful for the submissions we received. We’re fortunate to have read from so many wide-ranging works from a diverse array of applicants.
This year’s grant was for a work of literature (in any literary genre) written in either Western or Eastern Armenian and published any time after 1900. We are very pleased to announce that, from the submissions received, the judges have awarded the grant to Taline Voskeritchian and Christopher Millis for their co-translation of Deserts of Heaven by Krikor Beledian. Voskeritchian and Millis will receive a $3,000 grant to complete a translation of a collection of writings by Beledian over his storied literary career.
Taline Voskeritchian has published widely in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East; her prose and translations have appeared in the London Review of Books, The Nation, Bookforum, Words without Borders, Journal of Palestine Studies, The Markaz Review, Jadaliyya, and other publications. Co-producer and translator of the documentary Վահէ Օշական՝ Միջնարար (Vahé Oshagan: Between Acts) on the modernist Armenian poet, she has taught at Boston University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, American University of Armenia, and has conducted translation seminars for the Palestine Festival of Literature.
Christopher Millis is the author of four books of poetry, including The Handsome Shackles, Impossible Mirrors, and translations of the Italian poet Umberto Saba, The Dark of the Sun, for which he received a Fulbright Grant. The recipient of awards from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Massachusetts Arts Council, his Off Broadway productions include the libretto for Jean Erdman’s dance opera The Shining House and Garbage Boy, first produced in 2006 by the New York International Fringe Festival. The former art critic for The Boston Phoenix, he has taught at Boston University, New York University, and Fordham University.
Voskeritchian and Millis’ collaborative translations from Krikor Beledian have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, International Poetry Review, Asymptote, and Wasafiri.
The importance of Beledian in the Armenian literary canon is undeniable; Karen Jallatyan, one of this year’s judges, describes his work as “cutting edge.” The passages which the translators submitted varied between beautiful poems and a thoughtful remediation on the Armenian language. It is clear that the translators spent a lot of time parsing out the author’s introspective musings.
We thank everyone for their submission, and our judges Tamar M. Boyadjian, Karen Jallatyan, and Garen Torikian for their invaluable time.
The 2024 Israelyan English Translation Grant from the International Armenian Literary Alliance was made possible by a generous donation from Souren A. Israelyan, whose funding will ensure more Armenian literature is translated into English. Learn more about the grant, and meet our 2024 Israelyan Armenian Translation Grant and 2024 Creative Writing Grant recipients and runners up.