Meet the Publishers
Here are the QAL Publishing panelists who will be reading at IALA Presents: The Future of Armenian Publishing is Queer event on Tuesday, June 21.
Araxie Cass is a writer whose work takes a variety of forms, from nonfiction essays to speculative fiction. Their work explores themes of identity, community, and culture and draws inspiration from her experience as a queer, mixed-ethnicity diasporan. They hold a B.A. in Creative Writing and Near Eastern Languages from the University of Chicago. Their work has been published in the Armenian Weekly, The HyePhen Magazine, HyeBred Magazine, and the Armenian Mirror-Spectator. They are also the Editor-in-Chief of Azad Archives, where they facilitate the collective creation of an inclusive Armenian online space.
Azad Archives is an alternative Armenian platform committed to breaking the silence on otherwise marginalized topics through interviews, research-based series, personal stories, and artistic expression. We are a collaborative online space where community plays a central role in bringing stories to life. We strive to create a space that connects the global Armenian community while being safe and inclusive, and emphasizing responsible storytelling and community learning.
Tatevik Sargsyan is a social change practitioner working on strategic design and place-based innovation; and founding publisher of Anamot Press and a Trustee of the Poetry Translation Centre. Alongside, she also runs a vintage bicycle restoration venture with her brother. She’s previously worked with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on research and translation projects; developed flagship innovation programmes with the Young Foundation and led on social innovation in public services at the Design Council. She’s currently working as a Strategic Designer with The Place Bureau and Senior Associate with the RSA in London. Her work has been published in Hunger, Garage, Kaleidoscope, måg, MTV, and Tremors. Tatevik is developing a publishing schedule for Anamot Press for 2022-24.
Anamot Press publishes poetry, essays, and short stories on queer experiences across borders and other stories, told with no shame. Initiated by Tatevik in 2020 during lockdown, Anamot curated The Poetry Streaming Series which involved 40+ invited writers, poets and publishers reading for IGTV. Anamot’s first publication The Sun Isn’t Out Long Enough edited by Tatevik, includes a foreword by Mary Jean Chan and an afterword by Kazim Ali. Through poetry and prose, 20 writers explore themes of belonging and loss in relation to migration; language and inhabiting the spaces in between identities; queer historical figures, liminal love and diasporic desires. Through publishing queer writers across borders in the same anthology, Anamot Press has positioned itself as a convenor, and continues to carve out a space for cross-border dialogue. This has led to initial conversations with independent publishers in the US with a view to collaborating on future publications to print UK/US versions of poetry and essay collections to further encourage intersectional cross-border dialogue and solidarity.
Anamot Press: https://www.anamotpress.com/about
The Sun Isn’t Out Long Enough: https://www.anamotpress.com/shop/p/queer-anthology
The Poetry Streaming Series: https://www.instagram.com/anamotpress/channel/
Sophia Armen is a writer and organizer, born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She is the Editor in Chief at Armenian America. She serves as the Co-Director of The Feminist Front, a gender & racial justice youth organization and Armenian-American Action Network, an organization figthing anti-Armenian racism and for civil, immigrant, and refugee rights. She is a former staff member of The HyePhen magazine and has been building in the survivor justice and SWANA movement for over ten years. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Markaz Review, Muslim Girl, Waging Nonviolence, Mondoweiss, Armenian Weekly, and The Electronic Intifada. She can be found on Twitter at @sophiaarmen and on Instagram at @sophiaarmen.
Armenian America is a community newspaper focusing on Armenian-American justice issues, identity, and culture by Armenian-American Action Network. We provide a platform for debate, creativity, and expression on issues facing the Armenian-American community today from a social justice perspective. Our mission is to uplift Armenian-American voices and issues long ignored. We publish news, op-eds, essays and cultural work. Armenian America is an inclusive, community-based publication serving the diverse needs of Armenian-Americans and allies.
Armenian America: https://armenianamerica.org/
Anna Nikoghosyan is a queer feminist activist and scholar and the co-founder of “FemLibrary Armenia”. Since 2008, Anna contributed in various civic and political movements in Armenia, predominantly focusing on feminist, queer, anti-capitalist and anti-militarist struggles and fight for democracy. In 2017-2020 Ms. Nikoghosyan lectured at Yerevan State University where she created “Gender and the Media” module. She is an author of several academic and journalism articles about feminism, queerness, critique of neoliberalism and militarization which have been published regionally and internationally and translated into several languages. Anna holds an MA on “Gender, Sexuality and Culture” from the University of Manchester, UK. Some of her publications include journalistic pieces at openDemocracy and Open Caucasus (OC) Media. Her recent academic pieces include “Rejecting (Patri)archy: Contemporary Manifestations of Feminist Resistance” in S. Gyulamiryan (ed.) Dialogues with Power. Yerevan and “Claiming back radical feminist politics: Popular feminism and the neoliberal agenda behind” in: Laranja. Berlin.
FemLibrary Armenia is a queer feminist collective that created a safe space with minimal resources but with endless communal devotion for queer feminist organising, resistance and knowledge building. Our initiative brings together and intertwines feminist and queer activism, art and academia in the spirit of solidarity and sisterhood. FemLibrary is uninstitutionalised and aims at uniting Armenian feminists across different intersecting movements, initiatives, groups and organizations, and strives for fighting against patriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism, militarism, colonialism and other intersecting layers of oppression by producing intersectional feminist knowledge and fostering creative ac(r)tivism. FemLibrary includes hundreds of books on gender, sexuality, feminist studies, political philosophy, political science, human rights and related fields and is open for the general public. The library also organizes reading clubs, book presentations, undertakes translations and writing of our own decolonial texts in Armenian. Forthcoming projects include Armenian translations of Sara Ahmed’s “Living a feminist life”, “Feminism for 99%: A Manifesto”, and a catalogue summarizing the first “Feminism corpo-real” festival.
https://www.facebook.com/armfemlibrary/
Lilit Martirosyan is a trans woman who has been involved in trans activism for more than 10 years, specializing in trans people’s rights, health and wellbeing, antidiscrimination, hate crime and speech, sexual and gender minorities, refugees, asylum seekers, people living with HIV and other disadvantaged sex workers. After graduating from Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan, and facing transphobia at every corner of society, she founded the first Armenian trans community-based organization in the South Caucasus in 2016 – “Right Side” Human Rights Defender NGO, which gathers hundreds of trans people and sex workers from all the regions of Armenia to initiate socio-cultural and legal reforms to prevent violations of human rights. Involved in human rights on both national and international levels, she has been a Steering Committee Member of the TGEU, and a Management Committee Member of the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network. She has famously given a speech in the National Assembly of Armenia and recommendations on LGBT rights to Armenia at the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council. In 2020 she was awarded the Human Rights Tulip, an annual award of the Dutch Government to individuals or organizations that promote human rights worldwide in peaceful and innovative ways. She is using the prize of €100,000 to further human rights work by creating a safer environment for Transgender LGBIQ people in Armenia.
“Let Me Be Me” is an online publication that tells the real stories of LGBTIQ Armenians with photo portraits, their oral narratives, and explanations of the legal, social, and human rights’ context, with recommendations for advocacy and legal change.
RightSide NGO: http://rightsidengo.com/
Let Me Be Me: http://rightsidengo.com/publication/let-me-be-me/
Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher, and literary organizer, working in the spaces between race, ethnicity, cultural identity, feminism and queer identity. She is the author of The Fear of Large and Small Nations, a finalist for the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction, forthcoming from Nauset Press in Fall 2022. Her memoir, Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (aunt lute books, 2008), and her collection of poetry Princess Freak (Beyond Baroque Books, 2000), both deal with the intimacies of Armenian American identity via stories of coming-of-age, queerness, and intergenerational trauma. Recently, she was awarded Lambda Literary Foundation’s 2021 Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. From 2001 to 2011, she led Gartal, a multicultural Armenian literary reading series in NYC. She is a longtime teacher of creative writing at universities and community spaces, currently leading class at NYU and Grub Street. Nancy is proud to serve on the board of IALA.
Click here to register for the event.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.