In Conversation With Nadia Owusu

When I picture an earthquake, I picture an earthquake. And, I picture my mother’s back and my father’s tumor and planes crashing into towers. When I picture an earthquake, I picture orphans in Armenia and child soldiers. I picture myself, safe, behind guarded walls. I picture an absence. I hear thunder and silence. An earthquake is trauma and vulnerability: The earth’s, mine, yours.

—Aftershocks: A Memoir

The Armenian Institute (AI) and the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) will welcome author Nadia Owusu to discuss her memoir, Aftershocks, on Thursday, November 11, 2021 at 7:30 pm BST / 1:30 pm EST / 10:30 am PST.

The New York Times called Owusu’s memoir “gorgeous and unsettling.” The Washington Post described Aftershocks as “full of narrative risk and untrammeled lyricism.” Oprah Magazine said, “In a literary landscape rich with diaspora memoirs, Owusu’s painful yet radiant story rises to the forefront.”

Aftershocks topped many most-anticipated and best book of the year lists, including The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, Vogue, TIME, Vulture, and the BBC. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s choice.

Owusu is a Ghanaian and Armenian-American writer and urbanist. Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, she was raised in Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana and Uganda. Owusu is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay, So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. By day, Owusu is the director of storytelling at Frontline Solutions, a Black-owned consulting firm that helps social-change organizations to define goals, execute plans and evaluate impact. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the Mountainview low-residency program, where she now teaches.

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