Meet the Mentors of the 2023 IALA Mentorship Program
This year, 19 published authors are serving as mentors in our third annual mentorship program, which will run until August 31, 2023. Learn more about the inimitable Armenian authors donating their time to guide our mentees!
The application period for our 2023 mentorship program is closed. Please subscribe to our newsletter for future updates.
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 2014 Tololyan Literary Award. Aida has been featured on NPR, The Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, Poets & Writers, and various reading series throughout Queens and Manhattan. Her short story collection These Hills Were Meant for You was shortlisted for the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Award. Aida’s most recent novel, All the Ways We Lied, is forthcoming in January 2024 (Keylight Books). She is currently working on completing her short story collection, Where There Can Be No Breath At All.
Alene Terzian-Zeitounian received an M.A. and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry; In 2019, she completed her doctorate in Education from ASU in the Leadership and Innovation Program. She currently teaches creative writing and serves as the Humanities Department Chair at College of the Canyons. She is also the faculty advisor of COC’s award-winning literary magazine, cul-de-sac. In addition to her work in academia, Alene is the Chief Advisor and Senior Facilitator at Culturally Intelligent Training and Consulting. Her first book, Deep as City’s Ache, explores the Lebanese Civil Conflict both environmentally and psychologically. Her poems have appeared in The Colorado Review, Mizna, Cordite, Levitate, Media Cake, Duende, and Rise Up Review to name a few.
Aris Janigian is the author of five critically-acclaimed novels–Bloodvine (2003), Riverbig (2009), This Angelic Land (2012), Waiting for Lipchitz at Chateau Marmont (2016), WAITING FOR SOPHIA at Shutters on the Beach (2019)–and co-author, along with April Greiman, of Something from Nothing (2001), a book on the philosophy of graphic design.
Janigian has pursued a three pronged life and career, as a writer, academic, and following in his father’s footsteps, as a wine grape packer and shipper in Fresno California, where he currently lives. Holding a PhD in psychology, Janigian was Senior Professor of Humanities at Southern California Institute of Architecture, and a contributing writer to West, the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine. He was a finalist for Stanford University’s William Saroyan Fiction Prize and the recipient of the Anahid Literary Award from Columbia University.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arminé Iknadossian’s family fled to California when she was four years old to escape the civil war. After graduating from UCLA, Iknadossian earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. The author of All That Wasted Fruit (Main Street Rag Press), Iknadossian’s work is included in XLA Anthology, Ruminate, Five South, Whale Road Review, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, MacQueen’s Quarterly and The American Journal of Poetry. She recently received a Professional Artists Grant from the Arts Council of Long Beach. She has also received fellowships from Idyllwild Arts, The Los Angeles Writing Project and Otis College of Art and Design. Armine is on the Advisory Board of IALA and is also one of the Tlaquilx poets for Project 1521.
Arthur Kayzakian is the winner of the 2021 inaugural Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series for his collection, The Book of Redacted Paintings, which was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is the recipient of the 2023 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He serves as the Poetry Chair for IALA. His work has appeared in several publications, including The Adroit Journal, Portland Review, Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Witness Magazine.
Arthur Nersesian is the author of eight novels, including The Fuck-Up (Akashic, 1997 & MTV Books/Simon & Schuster, 1999), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic), Suicide Casanova (Akashic), dogrun (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster), and Unlubricated (HarperCollins). He is also the author of East Village Tetralogy, a collection of four plays. Nersesian was the managing editor of the literary magazine “The Portable Lower East Side” and was an English teacher at Hostos Community College (C.U.N.Y.) in the South Bronx. He was born and raised in New York City, and currently lives there.
Dana Walrath practices a border crossing blend of creative writing, comics, art, and anthropology. Her award-winning works include Aliceheimer’s, a graphic memoir about her mother’s dementia journey, Like Water on Stone, a verse novel about the Armenian genocide, and The Book of Genocides, an interactive art installation that uses artists books to counter dehumanization and genocide. Her comics, poetry, and essays have appeared in places such as The Lancet, Irish Times, Slate, Foreign Policy, and on Public Radio. She has shared her work on the healing power of story throughout North America and Eurasia including two TEDx talks. A Fulbright Scholar and Atlantic Fellow with work spanning the entire life cycle, other recent projects include the libretto for the Aliceheimer’s chamber opera, the picture book I Am a Bird, and a contribution to the anthology Menopause: A Comic Treatment a double Eisner Award winner and New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2020.
Jennifer Manoukian is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. She earned her doctorate in 2023 from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Her research focuses on Ottoman Armenian language practices and ideologies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is also a translator from Western Armenian and presently at work on an English translation of Yervant Odian’s memoir 12 Years Away from Constantinople, an entertaining account of the writer’s exploits and escapades across Europe and Egypt between 1896 and 1908.
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, the vineyard of mirrors on Armenian and Afrofuturism, Ինքնակենսագրականութիւն Autobioliterature (forthcoming). She is also the editor of two out of the three extant anthologies of translation of contemporary Armenian literature into English: makukachu, and unscripted: An Armenian Palimpsest [Absinthe: World Literature in Translation].
Gregory Djanikian’s latest collection of poetry is Sojourners of the In-Between (Carnegie Mellon University Press). His poems have appeared in such places as The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, New Ohio Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, as well as in numerous anthologies including Best American Poetry, Good Poems, American Places (Viking), Becoming Americas: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Library of America), Poem in Your Pocket (The Academy of American Poets), Language for a New Century (Norton), 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Random House), among others.
Director of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania for many years, he retired in 2015.
Dr. Hrayr Varaz Khanjian 🐗 is a queer Western Armenian-ist, Yelamu-based (SF) twitter-poet, translator, linguist, flower photographer, empath, seks worker, emoji-er, dancemonger👯, a kweer community flagbearer. He’s a white non-disabled gay cis-male who writes with spelling freedoms and welcomes odar-words (non-Armenian words) putting aside amot (shame). Hrayr‘s first self-published bilingual poem pair collection #jivjiv #twitterpoem is now in its second printing, with a second volume out at the end of the year. He’s also translated and collaborated on language projects with the Armenian Creatives. Hrayr reads his jivjivs frequently in SF, LA, NY.
Los Gatos Poet Laureate Jen Siraganian is a writer, educator, and literary organizer. She has served as Managing Director for Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, been nominated for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, earned scholarships from Community of Writers and Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, has been featured in San Francisco Chronicle, The Mercury News, and NPR’s KALW, and authored a chapbook titled “Fracture.” Her writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Cream City Review, Mid-American Review, Smartish Pace, Barrow Street, Southwest Review, and other journals and anthologies.
Lola Koundakjian writes poetry in Armenian and English. She has four collections: The Accidental Observer; Advice to a Poet (finalist – Orange Book Prize in Armenia); The Moon in the Cusp of my Hand, and a chapbook of Armenian poems.
Lola has organized readings for The Dead Armenian Poets Society and runs the Armenian Poetry Project. She was a member of the Editorial Board of Ararat, a literary quarterly, from 1995 to 2007 and since 2020 serves on IALA’s board.
Lola has read her work at international poetry festivals: Medellín, Trois-Rivières, Ramallah, Lima, Buenos Aires and Santiago.
Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher and literary organizer who works in the intersections of queer, feminist, and Armenian identity. She is the author of The Fear of Large and Small Nations, a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, published by Nauset Press in May 2023. Her previous books include Princess Freak, a collection of poetry and performance art texts, and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, a memoir honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize. In 2021 she was awarded Lambda Literary Foundation’s Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction.
Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian is an author, journalist, historian, and accomplished raconteur, a Beirut-raised Sendai Armenian by way of Philadelphia and New York, based in Pittsburgh. She hosts the podcast Friday Night History and co-hosts the podcast Cleyera: Conversations on Shinto. She is a staff writer for Unseen Japan, and the author of the novels Grey Dawn: A Tale of Abolition and Union (Balance of Seven Press, 2020) and Confluence: A Person-Shaped Story (Balance of Seven Press, 2022). Follow her on Mstdn.jp, Twitch, Patreon, Facebook, Tumblr, and Bluesky at @riversidewings
Olivia Katrandjian is an Armenian-American based in Luxembourg whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, PBS, ABC, and Ms.. Her first novel was awarded second place in Luxembourg’s National Literary Prize. Her short fiction has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and listed for the Oxford Review of Books Competition, Bristol and Cambridge Short Story Prizes and Oxford-BNU Award. A Creative Armenia-AGBU fellow, Olivia founded the International Armenian Literary Alliance. Her work was anthologized in We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Armenian Diaspora. She holds a graduate degree in creative writing from Oxford University.
Susan Barba is the author of Fair Sun, which was awarded the Anahid Literary Prize and the Minas & Kohar Tölölyan Prize, and geode, a finalist for the New England Book Awards and the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the co-editor, with Victoria Rowe, of I Want to Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian, and the editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, which won the 2023 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, and elsewhere. She works as a senior editor for New York Review Books.
Writer, producer, filmmaker, editor. Veronica Pamoukaghlian has produced more than 10 films including two feature documentaries and translated and edited more than 30 books, including Cambridge University Press publications and New York Times bestsellers. She is currently working on a novel and shooting a film in France about actress Solveig Dommartin. She is a Centre Pompadour and New York Film Academy alumna and a recipient of scholarships from Sundance Film Institute, Ibermedia, the Inter American Dev. Bank, and Bankboston Foundation.
Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss is Anglo-Armenian from Cyprus. She moved to London at 18, trained at RADA and began her career as a dancer, then actress. She moved to Hollywood with her husband, producer William Butler-Sloss (1967-2018) and sons, Arum and Roibhilin, where she continues to work in voiceovers. In 2014, her diary about the 1974 war in Cyprus was exhibited and turned into a documentary Cyprus Summer 1974. Her book The Seamstress of Ourfa (published 2018) is the first in a trilogy beginning in the Ottoman Empire 1895 and following four generations of women.