Shushan Avagyan (b. 1976) is the author of two experimental novels Girq-anvernagir (A Book, Untitled, 2006) and Zarubyani kanayq (2014), and co-author, with the Queering Yerevan Collective, of Queered: What’s to Be Done with X-Centric Art (2011). She has translated several classics of the early Soviet avant-garde into English, including A Hunt for Optimism, The Hamburg Score, On the Theory of Prose by Viktor Shklovsky (Dalkey Archive Press) and Art and Production by Boris Arvatov (Pluto Press). She revived Shushanik Kurghinian’s work by translating and publishing the bilingual edition I Want to Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian (AIWA Press). Her articles, translations, and interviews have appeared in Contemporary Women’s Writing, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Asymptote, InTranslation, The International Literary Quarterly, Music and Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere.
Avagyan grew up in Soviet Armenia and lived in Zambia and Ethiopia with her parents who taught there as part of the Soviet Teach Abroad Program. After graduating from Khachik Dashtents School in Yerevan, she went to study at the Melkonian Educational Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus. She received her undergraduate degree in studio art with a focus on printmaking and book arts from Cedar Crest College, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in English studies from Illinois State University. She lives in Yerevan and teaches at the American University of Armenia, where she coordinates the Certificate in Translation program.