Literary Lights: The Kaleidoscope of Destiny

Sarah B. Ignatius worked for many years as a human rights lawyer and non-profit executive director, including as NAASR's first. Along the way, she was a kids’ tennis instructor in Washington, D.C.; a hamburger bun toaster and cashier at Mr. & Mrs. Bartley’s Burger Cottage in Cambridge, MA; and a rural community organizer in southeastern Montana. Her writing has received recognition from the New England Society of Children’s Books Writers & Illustrators and the National League of American Pen Women, and she was selected as a Somerville Arts Council Literature Artist Fellow. She graduated from Stanford University and Georgetown University Law Center. She is the granddaughter of Armenians uprooted from their ancestral homeland in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s and lives in Massachusetts with her husband.

Dana Mashoian Walrath is a writer, artist, and anthropologist. Her award-winning works include Aliceheimer’s, a graphic memoir about her mother’s dementia journey, and Like Water on Stone, a verse novel about the Armenian genocide. Her comics, art, essays, and poetry have been featured by The Nation, The Lancet, Slate, and NPR. Dana lives in Vermont. Her graphic narrative The Book of Genocides will be released by Harvard University Press on September 8, 2026.