Live from Holy Cross Church of Armenia - an audio series recorded on April 21, 2015

This week we launch a series of audio clips recorded live on April 21, 2015, at Holy Cross Church of Armenia, New York, NY. On that evening, we commemorated the lives of Armenian writers who were deported, killed or survived the Armenian Genocide, by reading a selection of their work.

Click here for the welcome note and invocation performed by David Bakamjian. 

Our heartfelt thanks to our readers; The Parish Council and the Board of Trustees, Holy Cross Church of Armenia, New York; Houshamadyan.org; The International Literature Festival Berlin (ilb), and, the Lepsiushaus Potsdam. Special thanks to Sig Rosen for the audio recording. 

Short biographies of the readers: 

Nancy Agabian is the author of Princess Freak and Me as her again:True Stories of an Armenian Daughter. Cellist David Bakamjian has a multifaceted career as a recitalist, chamber player, recording artist, orchestral musician, teacher & workshop director. Peter Bricklebank teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the Hudson Valley Writers Workshop; he is published in literary magazines and book reviews. Catherine Fletcher is a poet and an editor for Rattapallax magazine who recently served as Director of Poetry Programs at City Lore. Alina Gregorian is the author of Flying Bark and the chapbooks Navigational Clouds and Flags for Adjectives. Pierre Joris is a Luxembourg-American poet, translator, essayist & anthologist; his latest book is Barzakh (Poems 2000-2012). Lola Koundakjian is a poet who curates the Armenian Poetry Project. Vasyl Makhno is a Ukrainian poet, essayist, and translator. Norman Manea is a Romanian writer, professor & writer in residence at Bard College, MacArthur & Guggenheim Fellow, translated in more than 20 languages. Marianela Medrano is a Dominican writer and psychotherapist living in Connecticut. Ralph Nazareth is Professor of English at Nassau Community College. Arthur Nersesian has published eleven books and runs a weekly writing workshop in the East Village that is open to all serious writers. Nicole Peyrafitte is a Pyrenean-born multidisciplinary artist whose videos, paintings, writings, singing & cooking are often integrated into multimedia stagings. Aaron Poochigian, a poet and translator, won the New England Poetry Club's Daniel Varoujan Prize in 2012. Alan Semerdjian is a writer, a musician, and an educator who lives in the East Village. Sweta Srivastava Vikram is a three times Pushcart Prize nominee, novelist, poet, essayist, and columnist. Sarah Van Arsdale's fourth book of fiction, In Case of Emergency, Break Glass, will be published in spring, 2016 by Queen's Ferry Press; she teaches at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and NYU. George Wallace, author of 28 chapbooks of poetry, is writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace. Aida Zilelian is the writer of The Legacy of Lost Things, her debut novel which was awarded the 2014 Tololyan Literary Prize.

Short bios of the authors:  

Diran Chrakian, pen name Indra (1875 – 1921) poet, writer, painter and teacher escaped slaughter but died after deportation. Ardashes Haroutounian (1873 – 1915) poet, translator and literary critic. Komitas (1969 – 1935) an ordained priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster studied in Berlin. Although he survived the Genocide, he suffered a mental breakdown and died in a psychiatric hospital in Paris. Shushanik Kurghinian (1876 – 1927) a socialist and feminist poet fled the tsarist regime returning to Soviet Armenia where she lived until her death. Donabed Lulejian (1875 – 1917) studied at Yale and Cornell and became a professor at Euphrates College. He survived the Genocide then died of typhus after saving hundreds of lives. Rouben Sevak (1885 – 1915) a Lausanne educated M.D. and poet. Atom Yarjanian, pen name Siamanto (1878 – 1915) a Sorbonne educated editor and poet. Daniel Varoujan (1884 – 1915) teacher and poet studied in Venice and Ghent. Nigoghos Sarafian (1905 – 1973) prolific author and publisher lived in Paris and wrote extensively about the post-Genocide Armenians. William Saroyan (1908 – 1981) Pulitzer prize winning dramatist and author whose family fled the Lake Van region.  Baruyr Sevak (1924 – 1971) prolific poet and literary critic killed in a car crash after criticizing the Soviet corruption in Armenian SSR. His poem The Unsilenceable Belfry was dedicated to Komitas and to the remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. Vahan Tekeyan (1878 -– 1945) writer and editor was travelling in Jerusalem thus escaped the deportation. Zabel Yessayan (1878 – 1943) studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne; she fled before her arrest in 1915 and died under mysterious circumstances in Siberia. Krikor Zohrab (1861 – 1915) lawyer and writer served as a member of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.