The final installment of the reading series, Literary Lights 2024, features Lory Bedikian, author of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry winner, Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body. Bedikian was joined by award-winning poet, essayist and professor, Brian Turner.
Wry, tender, and formally innovative, Armen Davoudian’s debut poetry collection, The Palace of Forty Pillars, tells the story of a self estranged from the world around him as a gay adolescent, an Armenian in Iran, and an immigrant in America.
Selected by Barnes & Noble as their book-of-the-month for October 2023, Ariel Djanikian’s newly-released The Prospectors is a sweeping rags-to-riches story of survival and greed across American history following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush.
Literary Lights is a monthly reading series organized by the IALA, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center. The series features new works of literature by Armenian authors. Each event—held online—will feature a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members.
In the spirit of the season, Literary Lights featured Susan Barba, editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide. Barba will be joined by Dr. Jesse S. Arlen.