Meet the Mentees of the 2023 IALA Mentorship Program
This year, IALA celebrates a record number of talented and diverse writers who were selected as mentees for our third mentorship program, which will run until August 31st, 2023. We received many applications from around the world, and are excited to welcome writers from Artsakh, Armenia, Europe and North America working on novels, short stories, poetry and, for the first year, literary translation!
The application period for our 2023 mentorship program is closed. Please subscribe to our newsletter for future updates.
Alen Voskanian (MD, MBA, FAAHPM) is a practicing physician, an author, and the Chief Operating Officer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Network. He is board-certified in Family Medicine as well as Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Alen is passionate about improving healthcare for all.
Alen earned his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his medical degree from UC Irvine Medical School. He completed his residency at UCLA, followed by a fellowship in HIV. He earned his Business of Medicine MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. In recognition of his high academic achievement, he was elected to both the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society in medical school and the Beta Gamma Sigma International Honor Society in business school.
Alexia Kevonian was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to parents of Armenian descent. Immigrating to Los Angeles at the age of four, she became a part of the American immigrant experience. Early on, she discovered books by Roald Dahl as well as the Nancy Drew series and a love affair with the written word began. In due course, she started to write short stories and essays for herself, enjoying the freedom and creativity the pen afforded. Professionally, she pursued Clinical Psychology, using words to improve the lives of others. In her personal life, she married her best friend, Kevon, and they have three children, Atam, Sophia, and Neshan. If asked what she would take to a desert island, “my family and paper to write” would be her answer.
Asbed Pogarian was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. After graduating from the Armenian elementary school, he pursued his education at Melkonian Educational Institute in Cyprus and then at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, earning a degree in engineering.
Upon settling in Los Angeles, he embarked on a career as a utility consultant. In addition to his professional career, he also pursued writing, producing three screenplays and a novel.
Asbed is married and splits his time between Los Angeles and the village of Gosh in Armenia. Alongside his wife, he is actively involved in revitalizing the village, contributing to its development and growth.
Byurakn Ishkhanyan, an Armenian writer based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has published short stories in Armenian literary magazines, some translated into English. With a background of growing up in post-Soviet Armenia and spending most of her adult life in Europe, Byurakn‘s writing delves into themes of identity and belonging. She is an active member of the Aarhus Women Write collective and has performed her work at the LiteratureXchange festival in Aarhus. Currently, she is preparing her debut novel titled ‘Tote Bag’ for publication. Byurakn holds a PhD in psycho- and neurolinguistics.
Carolina Gazal is a Peruvian-Armenian writer and communications specialist based in Queens, New York. She is currently a writer for the AGBU Magazine where she covers timely topics on Armenian identity and culture.She is also a freelance lifestyle writer at Insider, where she was previously a Freelance Fellow editing articles on food, entertainment, and travel. She also covers food stories for newly-founded Armenian publication MIASEEN. She holds a BA honors degree in English and Communications from Boston College with a concentration in Creative Writing, where she received the Senior Honors Thesis Grant to travel to Sivas/Sepastia and pen her family history.
You can email her at gazalcarolina@gmail.com.
John Ohan Danho is an Armenian-American educator, editor, and writer. He possesses a Master’s in English Literature. When he isn’t adjuncting at community college, John Ohan often spends his time composing poetry and penning his manuscript, a fantasy novel using pre-Christian Armenian mythology as its foundation. He has been the Poetry Editor for HyeBred Magazine for several years, a now-annual digital publication that has featured some premiere expressions of art, poetry, and prose from the Armenian community during its tenure.
His goals are to publish a chapbook of his poetry, which explores hyphenated identity, and one day publish his manuscript.
Juliette Hagobian (she/her) is an eighteen-year-old poet and writer from Los Angeles, California. She has been published or is forthcoming in h-pem, Corporeal, Surging Tide, and The Howl. She works as a poetry/prose editor for Kalopsia Literary. Juliette is a 2023 poetry mentee of the Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program. She loves fruit-flavored gum and will challenge you to a game of Just Dance. Find her on Twitter as @jjules_h.
Karine Armen (Kurkjian) is a teacher, photographer, social worker, and writer. She taught as an elementary school teacher in Glendale for 32 years. She has a B.A. in photography and social work and a M.A. in Education Administration. She enjoyed teaching creative writing and poetry to her second-graders. Karine has written several articles for the Armenian Reporter, Armenian Weekly, and Asaberz. In 2010 Karine translated her mother’s self-help articles from Farsi to English and published them in a book called Inner Heaven. She has several poetry chapbooks. She is working on her memoir about cultural identity.
Lilly Torosyan is a freelance writer based in Connecticut. Her writing focuses on the confluence of identity, diaspora, and language – especially within the global Armenian communities. She has an M.A. in Human Rights from University College London and a B.A. in International Relations from Boston University. Her articles have appeared in publications such as the Armenian Weekly, h-pem, and EVN Report. She is currently working on her inaugural poetry collection. You may read many of her poems, stories, and musings on Instagram, at @liminaltrees.
Lusine Vanyan writes unique and war-torn stories of people of Artsakh and its local charm and struggle, where she was born and raised. The stories have been increasingly absorbed by her mind during cosy family talks, university classes, socio-cultural events or have been eavesdropped on the road, to pop out in due time. The opulent stories reveal the dedication, courage, purity of heart and grapple in Artsakh, isolated and forsaken, that, if overlooked, will delve into oblivion.
Lusine also writes in the style of personal essay both feature and fiction, that she embarked on after the recent war. She started writing as a scholar and translator, having worked as a tourist guide, an English teacher and a curator in the lore museum.
Marina Terteryan is a California-based Armenian immigrant who is an innovation executive and educator by day, and a writer and community leader by… later that day. At night, she dreams of her homeland. She uses creative nonfiction to inspire love, hope, empathy, and healing for communities who live at the intersection of identities. Her first self-published book is titled Sh!t My Armenian Grandma Says. It is a collection of short stories and the witty, profound, and loving thoughts of a quirky and kind Armenian Grandma, exploring themes of intergenerational friendship, immigrant culture, and aging with dignity.
Michelle Khazaryan is an Armenian-American writer born and based in Los Angeles. She received her BA in English with a focus on Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. She writes fiction and poetry focused on the lives of working-class Armenians in East Hollywood, gendered labor and caregiving, and the effects of climate change on her community. She is currently working on a short story collection.
Pattianna Harootian grew up in Reading, Massachusetts, living an idyllic childhood in a big house that was always filled with her and her siblings’ friends. She lists her parents as her heroes and credits them for influencing her to start a charity that empowers girls and women. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is a high school English teacher in southern California where she lives with her two sons, who are her whole world. Her grandmother, an Armenian Genocide survivor, inspired her to write the historical fiction novel, My Grandmother’s Tattoo.
Rachel Sona Reed is an anthropologist-turned-nonprofit consultant from Southern California clinging tenuously to her Armenian heritage through food, family, and fiction. She has written novels since 1994, but has yet to finish one. Rachel’s essays, micro-fiction, book reviews, and mediocre poetry have appeared in Anthropology & Aging, The Literary Review, Rose City Sisters, Language in Society, Angels Flight: Literary West, and Contemporary Contempt, where her reflection on Armenian-American identity remains her most widely read piece.
As a lifelong fan of fantasy and science fiction, Rafi Mankassarian was always drawn to the prospect of creating worlds of his own that moved others in the same way that the stories he grew up with moved him. As a third culture kid growing up abroad, coupled with a love of all kinds of storytelling, he was exposed to a different cultural milieu which he hopes gives him a different perspective for artistic endeavors. He hopes to bring a written voice that incorporates both his traveled nature and his Armenian heritage in imaginative and fantastical settings.
Roza Melkumyan is a US-born journalist, creative non-fiction writer, amateur linguist, and avid traveler who splits her time between Yerevan and Washington DC. She is dedicated to amplifying the voices of those whose stories might otherwise go unheard, and is a life-long learner, observer, and lover of cultures. She currently works for Freedom House in human rights and democracy, and previously worked as Communications Manager at the nonprofit ONEArmenia. She writes for various publications including EVN Report and FF2 Media on arts, culture, and technology and runs a personal Substack blog. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from New York University in 2018.
Sarah Elgatian is a second-generation Armenian-American writer with a lot of questions. Among other places, her work has appeared in Crab Fat, Beholder Magazine, and print anthologies including These Interesting Times: Surviving 2020, the Iowa Writers’ House We The Interwoven, and Fifth Wheel Press’s Flux. Marketing and Program Specialist at the Midwest Writing Center, Sarah facilitates the bi-monthly workshop group Writers’ Studio and bi-weekly webseries Write More Light in which she interviews literary figures and gives brief writing lessons. Her favorite art blurs the lines of genre. She likes bright colors, dark coffee, and long sentences.
Sarah B. Ignatius is a creative writer and lawyer and served as executive director of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research until the beginning of 2022. “The Devil’s Kaleidoscope,” her novel-in-progress, is middle-grade historical fiction about a twelve-year-old boy, Arakel, living through the Armenian genocide, who must rely on people he thinks are his enemies to survive. Previously, she worked as a lawyer and executive director in Boston and Seattle, representing asylum-seekers pro bono fleeing from persecution throughout the world. She taught immigration and asylum law at Boston College Law School and worked as a public defender and in private practice. She earned her B.A. from Stanford University (Distinction and Honors, Anthropology) and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
Sarah Mnatzaganian is an Anglo-Armenian poet based in Ely, UK. Her debut, Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter, won the 2022 Saboteur Award. Poems have also featured in PN Review, The Rialto, Poetry Wales, The North, Magma, Poetry News, Poetry Ireland Review, The Frogmore Papers, Poetry Salzburg Review, Alchemy Spoon and Pennine Platform. Sarah was highly commended in the 2019 and 2023 Mslexia Pamphlet competitions and was awarded first prize in the Spelt Poetry Competition 2021. Sarah has read for the King’s Lynn Poetry Festival, Poetry in Aldeburgh and for the online Cheltenham Poetry Festival and Live Canon.
Sarkis Antonyan is a nineteen-year-old poet and multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles, California. His work appears in Peach Magazine, Olit, Revolute, h-pem, Pollux Journal, The Round, and elsewhere. He is a winner of the International Armenian Literary Alliance’s 2021 Young Armenian Poets Awards. A poetry reader at The Adroit Journal, he spends his time admiring the color yellow, brewing peach tea, collecting frog sculptures, and knitting. He is dually attending Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.