Meet the IALA 2022 Translation Grant Recipient
We are delighted to announce that Dr. Tamar Marie Boyadjian is the recipient of our inaugural Translation Grant!
Dr. Tamar Marie Boyadjian (she/her) is a poet and translator and teaches courses on medieval literature, poetry (analysis and composition), and translation (theory and practice). She thinks of herself as a sound-shaper and a wandering ašuł. Her work is experimental, intertextual, and intercultural; and explores themes around movement, subjectivity, symbols and transmission—drawing from the threats imposed on endangered languages such as her native tongue Western Armenian.
She has authored, ինչ որ է ան է it is what it is (Andares, 2015), the vineyard of mirrors on Armenian and Afrofuturism (forthcoming, 2022), Ինքնակենսագրականութիւն Autobioliterature (forthcoming, 2023). She has published her poetry and translations widely in a number of literary journals, creative anthologies, and international volumes around the world. She is the editor of two out of the three extant anthologies of translation of contemporary Armenian literature into English: makukachu (Ingnakir, 2017), and unscripted: An Armenian Palimpsest [Absinthe: World Literature in Translation] (University of Michigan Press, 2017). Her current projects include an anthology of poetry of Western Armenian women writers; a translation of Zabel Yesayan’s Սպասման Սրահին Մէջ In the Waiting Room, for which she was awarded the IALA grant; and a translation with Dr. Maral Aktokmakyan and Dr. Rachel Goshgarian of Akabi Hikayetsi—the first known Armenian themed novel—from Armeno-Turkish to English. She is also currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies.
To purchase Tamar’s books, visit the following webpages: makukachu: Amazon; ինչ որ է ան է it is what it is: Amazon, Abril Books; unscripted: An Armenian Palimpsest: Amazon, Barnes and Noble.
The International Armenian Literary Alliance’s Translation Grant is an annual award of $2,500 given to one translator working from Armenian source texts into English. The 2022 Translation Grant was judged by Tatevik Ayvazyan, Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian, and Garen Torikian.
This grant was made possible by a generous donation from the Armenian Allied Arts Association, an organization based in Southern California, which discovered, encouraged and promoted new talent of Armenian descent for over eighty years. The grant was also generously supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – Գալուստ Կիւլպէնկեան Հիմնարկութիւն, whose funding will ensure that the selected translation will be published through Mashtots Press and sold and promoted globally. Learn more about the grant here.