Virtual Author Talk with Shahé Mankerian

From GLAC: Join the Glendale Library, Arts & Culture and the International Armenian Literary Alliance on April 14, 2022 at 6:00 pm Pacific time for a reading and discussion with the author, led by Nancy Kricorian. This event will be held virtually, via Zoom. 

Shahe will also lead a workshop on April 16, 2022 at 4 pm Pacific time on writing filmmable poetry, which will be open to 20 participants. Patrons must register online here.

Shahé Mankerian’s critically-acclaimed debut collection, History of Forgetfulness, takes readers to 1975 Beirut, where an un-civil war is brewing. Mankerian asks, “Who said war didn’t love / the children?” setting the tone for a darkly humorous collection in which memories of love, religion and childhood are entangled amongst street snipers and the confusion of misguided bombings.

Ron Koertge writes, “Shahé Mankerian never leaves a reader un-engaged.” Poet Laureate Emerita Thelma Reyna writes, “A survivor of the Lebanese civil war in the late 20th century, Mankerian unspools in devastating simplicity and directness, in seemingly inconsequential scenes, the horrors and suffering of children, parents, neighbors, schoolmates, friends, lovers navigating daily bombardments, scavenging for food, dodging snipers’ bullets, and trying to find a modicum of normalcy among the ruins.” Isabelle Kenyon, of Fly on the Wall Press, writes, History of Forgetfulness “has touched the hearts of readers internationally, and was fast to become our best-selling title of all time…In documenting trauma, Shahe has brought hope and understanding. What more could you ask from poetry? I hope ‘History of Forgetfulness’ will be much-loved for years to come.”

Shahé Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School and the Director of Mentorship at the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). History of Forgetfulness has been a finalist at the Bibby First Book Competition, the Crab Orchard Poetry Open Competition, the Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Award, and the White Pine Press Poetry Prize.

Nancy Kricorian is the author of the novels Zabelle, Dreams of Bread and Fire, and All the Light There Was. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, and New York University, as well as in the New York City Public Schools with Teachers and Writers Collaborative and in Birzeit for the Palestine Writing Workshop. She is currently working on a novel about Armenians in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.

Order History of Forgetfulness directly from Fly on the Wall Press, or from Abril Books or Amazon. 

You will receive a link to the virtual program with additional login information up to 2 days prior to the event’s date. For additional event information, visit the Library, contact us via email  LibraryInfo@GlendaleCA.gov, or call us at 818-548-2021.

Registration for the author talk is here

Registration for the workshop is here

You can order History of Forgetfulness here