Tenny Arlen’s To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here?

Tenny Arlen grew up in San Luis Obispo, CA and graduated from UCLA in 2013. In 2015, she was admitted to the University of Michigan's doctoral program in Comparative Literature with a plan to study French and Armenian symbolist poetry, but she passed away in a car accident in the summer of 2015 before beginning the program.

Her book of poems, published by the ARI Literature Foundation (Yerevan, 2021) with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, was republished in a bilingual edition by Tarkmaneal Press in 2025 with the original poems alongside English translations by Tenny and her brother Dr. Jesse Arlen.

Dr. Jesse Arlen is the director of the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center at the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. His research focuses on medieval literature and religion culture. He is also a published writer and translator of Western Armenian poetry and critical and creative prose.