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The Burning Heart of the World

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Doing and Undoing

Little by little the cotton is spun. ~ Armenian proverb

Every year on the 24^th of April, Armenians around the world commemorate the start of the Armenian Genocide in 1915. For me this date is firmly anchored in my memories of my Armenian grandmother and the congregation of the United Armenian Brethren Church that my grandfather helped to found. My survivor grandmother and the other survivors of her generation in our church, many of them having been orphaned as children, were carriers of a traumatic history that was rarely articulated, but which suffused our community. Their experiences of unspeakable mass violence, dispossession, and exile were passed to the next generations as both a burden and a legacy.

I have always felt that my commitment to fairness as a child and to justice and accountability as an adult are the fruits of having grown up in the Armenian community. In this violent and frightening time, each day I try to find one kind thing I can do or one cruel thing I can help undo. Sometimes I do this alone, but most times I am part of a group. And these small acts and the relationships we make as we do them are the best antidotes to despair.

Recommended viewing, reading, listening

In honor of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day here is a short video about the history of the Armenian village of Anjar in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. It features my friend Antranik Dakessian.

As reported by LitHub, a collective of autonomous writers, artists, and musicians has launched the 92NO campaign to call on their colleagues to withhold their labor from the Arts and Culture Program of 92NY because of the institution’s support for war and genocide. You can follow 92NO on Instagram and X/Twitter.

My WANN mentee Taqwa Ahmed Alwawi wrote a searing piece for LitHub about scholasticide in Gaza.

This is must-read interview with Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah about health sovereignty in Palestine.

This fascinating episode of the Psychic Militancy podcast features a discussion with Avgi Saktepoulou and Iris Hefets about the Palestine Global Mental Health Network’s call for all psychoanalysts of conscience to resign from the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Palantir posted a 22-point “Western” tech supremacist manifesto on X/Twitter the other day that was described as sounding like “the ramblings of a supervillain.” Eliot Higgins of Belling the Cat had a good BlueSky thread in response, and Yanis Varoufakis offered a point by point translation. If you’re interested in taking action against this company that poses a threat to humanity, sign up for the Purge Palantir campaign. More information is available from the American Friends Service Committee.

I was impressed by Wikipedia’s guide to spotting AI generated writing, and if you want a short primer, you can watch this reel by Will Francis.

Nancy Kricorian

April 24, 2026

The First of April

When the first crocuses appeared this year, I thought to myself, “We made it!” as though winter were a battle that we had survived. Now it’s April. The daffodils are blooming in Morningside Park, and the ornamental cherries are flaring their pink skirts along Central Park’s reservoir. I have never been a fan of practical jokes, hoaxes, or pranks, so April Fool’s Day is not a custom that I observe. April 1^st was, however, my Armenian grandmother’s chosen birthday. As an orphaned genocide survivor whose birthdate was inscribed in a lost family Bible, she knew neither the day nor the year of her birth. April brings spring showers, spring flowers, and in Armenian the word abril (ապրիլ) is both this month and the verb to live.

How do we live in this dystopian moment when mere minutes of reading the headlines is like sprinting through a raging fire? While walking down the avenue, I am struck by how normal and peaceful everything appears even as I am carrying with me the knowledge of the mass murder of schoolgirls in Iran, the targeting of journalists, medics, and other civilians in Lebanon, and the ongoing genocide against the people of Palestine. And then there are the domestic horrors. So, after I register all of this, I must find something doable and I must do it. I know you have heard this from me before, but I literally repeat these phrases in my head each day, sometimes more than once: The only recognizable feature of hope is action (Grace Paley); Choose your lane, find your people (Mariame Kaba); Freedom is a constant struggle (Angela Davis).

My WANN mentee Nadera wrote a beautiful, sad piece about celebrating Ramadan before and after the genocide. I’ve been going to weekly meetings of our neighborhood deportation defense rapid response (DDRR) group. I have also been working with the DSA-NYC Immigrant Justice Working Group and its efforts with the Purge Palantir coalition. I did some preliminary campaign research on Palantir—truly the stuff of nightmares. (If you want to see my draft research document, let me know and I’ll send it to you, but in the meantime, check out Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s latest shenanigans.) There was some good news this week as the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation announced they would not be renewing their contact with Palantir when it comes to an end in October. On another front, I’m collaborating with an autonomous group of fierce and clever writers on a campaign to hold a major cultural institution to account. We are finding moments of satisfaction, and, dare I say, joy in our work together.

Gathering in the real world with friends and family is another way of fostering light in dark times. James and I recently hosted a launch party for our friend Tim Mitchell’s brilliant new book The Alibi of Capital. In February, we restarted our old tradition of a monthly Sunday brunch. At our second gathering in March, as I looked around the table at our friends, I remembered lines from The Elder Edda (as translated from the Icelandic by Paul B. Taylor and W.H. Auden):

If you know a friend you can truly trust,

And wish for his good will,

Exchange thoughts, exchange gifts,

Go often to his house.

Finding these moments of connection make the work possible.

Yours in struggle,

Nancy

READ, LISTEN, LOOK

On March 13, The Burning Heart of the World was knocked out in the first round the Tournament of Books, but the judge’s reasoning and the conversation below were interesting. On March 27, I lost in the Zombie round, but there was some laudatory commentary.

In the good news department, a federal court has found that Columbia University may have acted as a government instrument to suppress Palestinian advocacy in violation of the First Amendment. This finding means the suit will go to discovery and all those emails between the craven trustees and their sketchy congressional partners will become public.

Via Mondoweiss Psychoanalysts are Resigning from the International Psychoanalytical Association over Its Anti-Palestinian Double Standard. Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou, a New York analyst and theorist, named something rarely spoken publicly: that the IPA’s silence has ‘created a permissive professional atmosphere in which Zionist analysts feel entitled to eruptions — saying racist and discriminatory things to their patients and supervisees — both in the consulting room and on our email lists.’

Arundhati Roy on the war against Iran: Any regimes that need changing, including the US, Israel, and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission.

We Live in a Time of Monsters—a message from Beirut by Lina Mounzer: But we have learned from Gaza that there is no rule of law, and there are no repercussions for the crimes of the powerful.

Listen to the brilliant Aslı Ü. Bâli via Jewish Currents’ On the Nose Podcast.

Via Instagram. Enjoy these Heated Rivalry themed posters from 28 March No Kings Day. And take the Heated Rivalry Quiz (should I be proud or embarrassed to say that I knew all the answers?).

Nancy Kricorian

April 1, 2026

Stewing and Knitting

hand-knit baby jacket in red cotton with red buttons

January was a tumultuous and disturbing month: field executions in the streets of Minneapolis; ICE and CBP running amok in Minnesota, Maine, and elsewhere; the continuing retail slaughter in Gaza; and Jared Kushner’s hideous plans for the same, to name just a few of the outrages. I forced myself to take my news in small doses so as not to be stewing around the clock with grief and rage.

Fortunately, I was able to distract myself with knitting, which is a form of meditation for me. There is something about the steady and repetitive motion of hands and needles that calms my central nervous system. There is also satisfaction in completing a project that results in a useful item of clothing. A friend of mine had a baby right after Christmas, and I knit her an Easy Peasy Baby jacket.

Another much-needed distraction was a rather steamy six-part series on HBO Max based on a series of popular novels about gay hockey players. If you somehow have managed not to hear about it, Heated Rivalry has spawned a frenzy of social media posts, memes, jokes, analyses, and even look-alike contests. I know people who have watched all six episodes two or more times. The show’s stars, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, were presenters at the Golden Globes, appeared at fashion shows in Milan and Paris, and carried the Olympic torch in Italy. And they are just getting started. Storrie is set to host Saturday Night Live on February 28. My interest in—shall we say obsession with—Heated Rivalry has resulted in a domestic ban on my talking about it. Luckily for me I have a few friends who are equally obsessed, and there are tens of thousands of others in the same situation so there’s plenty of information, images, and comic material to consume. If I had to pick one word to encapsulate the show’s draw, I would say it is not actually the sex, but the YEARNING. (Akin to the PG-rated teen yearning in another series I loved the first season of: Heartstopper.) If you have watched Heated Rivalry or do watch it, drop me a line. I’d love to know what you think. At the very least it will take your mind off the political dumpster fire we are living through for an hour or more.

And back to that dumpster, the Department of Justice’s release 3 of million new documents from the Epstein files at the end of last week has resulted in the resignation of David A. Ross, the chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Program. His exchanges with the late convicted sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein were truly repellent. The whole trove of documents opens up a ghastly vision of rich and powerful people, primarily white men, swimming in a swill of impunity, self-congratulation, and patriarchal entitlement. It was grim to see Noam Chomsky’s chummy emails to Epstein as part of this. I do hope someone will do a deep dive investigative piece on Epstein’s purported links to the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. The saddest aspect for me is to think about all the girls—children as young as fourteen years old—who were lured by Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their collaborators and then abused by this network of creeps who until now have not been held accountable for their crimes.

These details about Epstein and Company are giving me nightmares and making me feel like we’re living either in an episode of Law and Order SVU or in the 2008 BBC production of Henning Mankell’s Sidetracked.

Time to start knitting. Yesterday I bought the yarn I need to make this Melt The Ice Hat and I’m going to cast on the first stitches tonight.

Yours,

Nancy K

P.S.

If you’re in Los Angeles, I will be reading with Randa Jarrar on the evening of Friday, 27 February at Watermelon Books. It’s a brand new bookseller devoted to Palestine that has a sister location in Amman, Jordan. Randa and I will be featured at their inaugural public event in L.A.. The link to register is here.

My novel The Burning Heart of the World in included in Mizna’s favorite SWANA books of 2025

On February 3^rd, The Nation hosted an online “Day for Gaza,” turning their website over to stories from Gaza and its people.

Listen to this great podcast interview with Corey Doctorow and Lina Khan discussing his book Enshittification.

February 5, 2026

A Few Good Books

As 2025 draws to a close, I wanted to recommend a few of the best books I have recently read.

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer. Neige Sinno tells the story of being sexually abused by her stepfather from the age of seven to thirteen, and examines literary, psychological, and cultural portrayals of and reactions to child sexual abuse and incest. I read this memoir in two days and was completely bowled over by its fierce intelligence. Words Without Borders published a fascinating interview with Sinno and her English translator.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. A profound and moving memoir by internationally acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy, whose mother was a feminist icon in India as well as a difficult and at times abusive parent. It is a double portrait of mother and daughter that is honest and infused with unexpected grace. Listen to Mehdi Hasan’s great podcast interview with Arundhati.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. First published in 1855, Gaskell’s novel about the differences between the rural south and the industrial north of England was described by one recent reader as “Pride and Prejudice for Socialists.” The conflict and inevitable romance between proud and idealistic Margaret Hale and hard-nosed industrialist John Thornton made the pages fly by. I also loved the 2004 BBC adaptation (despite the corny ending—the novel’s final lines were so much better).

Counterpunch’s Joshua Frank included my novel in his own Favorites of 2025 list! I’m still thrilled about its having been selected for the Tournament of Books shortlist—and the mention here on BookRiot. And if you’re on Goodreads and have read The Burning Heart of the World, please do leave a review or a rating. It helps increase awareness of the book. The same applies to LibraryThing and The StoryGraph.

As the genocide in Gaza grinds on through a blockade that leaves people in flooded and collapsing tents during winter storms, while hunger and lack of medicine continue to weaken and kill the most vulnerable, and Israel’s campaign of retail (rather than wholesale) murder rolls on, my friend and mentee Nadera has sent me a fundraising appeal for her family. “This money will help my family with living expenses: school and university fees for myself and my five siblings, rent for our apartment, clothes for all of us, water, electricity, food, and so on. As you know, the war stole everything from us, even my dad’s work. Thank you for your understanding!” If you would like to donate, please message me and I will give you the PayPal information for her cousin, who is collecting funds on Nadera’s behalf.

In early December, I spoke with Tamar Shirinian and Milena Abrahamyan on their Other Armenias podcast. We talked about my novels, writing, and solidarity. And Rebecca Evans wrote about our interview on the December episode of the Writer-To-Writer show on Radio Boise. It was actually a delight to speak with Rebecca and her co-host Ken Rodgers.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but as Grace Paley put it, “The only recognizable feature of hope is action.” To wit, I have recently rejoined the Immigrant Justice Working Group of DSA NYC. May we create more light and more justice in 2026.

Sirov,

Nancy

Nancy Kricorian, December 2025

February 4, 2026

Comfort and Light

Sunset over a meadow with a pond

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken…

~ Virginia Woolf, The Waves

For the past two years, when people ask me how I am doing, I have found myself saying, “Genocide, climate catastrophe, and fascist takeover aside, on a personal level, I am okay.” But a quick perusal of newspaper headlines or the update from WTF Just Happened Today undoes that sense of feeling okay. Rather than asking people how they are, I now tend to greet them with, “I’m so happy to see you!” Because in this dystopian time, being together with loved ones, comrades, and like-minded friends is the best balm for the spirit.

Where do you go for solace? A Palestinian friend of mine who lives in Ramallah says working in her garden is the only thing that keeps her sane. Another friend has taken up quilting. Lately, to distract myself, I have been reading 19^th Century English novels and then watching their BBC adaptations. I very much enjoyed Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the 1996 television serial.

I also wanted to share some information with you about Alphabet/Google—and specifically Gmail—and what you need to do to protect your information. Without alerting users, Alphabet has defaulted Gmail settings so that its Gemini AI program can scrape data from your account, including all emails and attachments, for training purposes. A lawsuit against the company and its Gemini practices has been filed in California. You can read about how to disable Gemini and its scraping of your data, whereby the company is effectively spying on everything you do within Alphabet’s various apps and platforms. When you disable Gemini, you lose its tools, such as spellcheck and the sorting of emails into categories, but this seems like a small price to pay to protect your data and privacy.

Wishing you as much comfort and light as possible this holiday season and in the new year. May our daily practices of kindness and resistance make the world a little brighter.

Fond regards,

Nancy

READ AND LISTEN

An interesting piece by Adam Tooze on Zohran Mamdani’s win and the way forward

The former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College via LitHub on why he would prefer not to talk to the New York Times about Zohran Mamdani.

Hamza Salha’s piece in the Limerick Voice: ‘When I saw Ireland, I Cried’: Palestinian Students Escape War to Study at UL.

Spencer Ackerman blasts a former Obama speechwriter’s viral video from the Jewish Federation conference: Sarah Hurwitz Profanes the Holocaust

PalFest Podcast episode “A choice between extermination and justice”: Ta-Nahisi Coates interviews Tareq Baconi.

International Armenian Literary Association (IALA) holiday book guide (with my latest novel at the top of the list).

Nancy Kricorian

December 2, 2025

An Inspiring and Historic Win

I have known Zohran Mamdani and his parents since he was eight years old and in the same third grade classroom with our elder child at the Bank Street School. We have been friends of the family since that time. My spouse James and Zohran’s dad Mahmoud were founding faculty members of Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies. James was the studio executive at Focus Features who greenlit his mother Mira Nair’s film adaptation of Vanity Fair. It’s almost surreal to have witnessed Zohran’s meteoric rise in the past six months. Last night as our family watched the elections returns—Noah and I were in Morningside Heights, James was on a trip to Los Angeles, and Djuna joined a thousand DSAMembers at the Masonic Temple in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—we were texting each other photos, memes, and updates and then sharing our jubilation when the election was called on his behalf.

James said to me this morning, Now they know the only way to stay in power is a fascist putsch, so it’s going to be dangerous. But, as my friend Rebecca put it, at least the fight is on. And we won’t only be fighting the horsemen of the apocalypse (as I call the current administration) but the Democratic “centrists” who seem to be more afraid of the left wing of their party and anti-genocide protesters than they are of the authoritarian, grifting racists they are putatively in opposition to.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate Zohran’s inspiring and historic win. And then let’s get back to work.

Fond regards,

Nancy

November 5, 2025

A Weekend in Dublin

a meadow with several fallow deer and a young woman — Fallow Deer in Phoenix Park, Dublin

Last month I traveled to Ireland to meet university students who had been evacuated from Gaza in August and September. I am part of a group that had helped them apply to Irish universities and to secure scholarships for both undergraduate and post-graduate programs. This effort has been among the most satisfying and meaningful experiences of my life. Over twenty members of our all-volunteer team, three of whom live in Ireland with others coming from the U.S., Canada, and Jordan, converged in Dublin for several days of meetings with the students and with each other.

Most of these students had been awarded scholarships to U.S. universities but had been trapped in Gaza for more than a year, unable to reach the campuses for which they were destined. The receiving country would have to negotiate with the Israeli government to enable their safe passage, and chances were nil that the Trump administration would do this. So, earlier this year, our team pivoted to Ireland, where we knew these brilliant young people would be welcomed with open hearts and open arms.

After months of communicating with them via WhatsApp and Signal chats while they were living amidst a genocide in Gaza, greeting these students in the real world was an almost unimaginable joy. I arrived a few days earlier than most of our group so I could spend time with my mentee and friend S, a poet who is enrolled in Trinity’s master’s program in creative writing. I thought it would be strange, finally being in the same physical space after our year and a half of almost daily communication on message platforms while she was in Gaza, but when I arrived at her student apartment, the only thing I learned that I didn’t already know was how tall she was. She gave me a tour of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, we walked along the river, dined at a Palestinian restaurant, and rode bicycles in Phoenix Park where we went in search of the fallow deer and found them at the far end of the park.

I also made an overnight trip to the University of Limerick with two other mentors to meet our cohort of students there and the administrators who had scrambled the resources to support them. As nineteen of us were seated in a Lebanese restaurant in Limerick, one of the students gestured at the platters arrayed on the long table and said to me, “I wish I could take this food to my family in Gaza.” All these students had left their families behind, and their emotional well-being is pegged to how their parents, siblings, and extended family are faring in Gaza. Each of them is also struggling with the trauma of what they had seen and survived, along with the guilt of having escaped. The young journalists among them carried the added burden of what they had witnessed and documented through their work.

Despite all this, our weekend together in Dublin overflowed with joy and love. On Saturday night, over a hundred students, mentors, and university administrators filled a local restaurant with conversation, laughter, and song. At an all-day workshop for the students on Sunday, during the lunch break, someone turned on music, and the students pulled us to join them in dance. Looking around the room at the beautiful faces of these students and my fellow mentors, I felt proud of these young people and of our work safeguarding their futures and the future of Palestine.

If anyone is interested in learning more our efforts, which will now shift in part to supporting the rebuilding of the educational sector in Gaza, please get in touch with me directly.

All best,

Nancy

Sticker on a metal pole — Freedom for Palestine sticker in Dublin

WATCH AND READ

Public Instagram reel of Mohammed Hirez, one of our students in Ireland, as he says goodbye to his twin brother and widowed father on the morning of his evacuation from Gaza to Ireland. It is an unfathomably cruel world that forces this kind of separation on them without their knowing when they will meet again.

Palestine Deep Dive video interview with Hamza Salha, another of our students and a journalist, entitled “Buried Under Rubble.”

Abdallah Aljazzar’s “My Last Words to Gaza” about the heartbreak of leaving his family behind.

My We Are Not Numbers mentee Nadera Mushtha on returning to the rubble of her family home in Shujaiya. Nadera is still internally displaced within Gaza.

On the Nose (Jewish Currents’ podcast) episode: The Rabbinic Freak-Out About Zohran Mamdani. (And may Zohran be the next mayor of New York City!)

A conversation between Marianne Hirsh and M. Gessen about the field of Holocaust Studies and the impact of the genocide in Gaza.

Video recording of the Markaz Review Book Club’s discussion of my recently published novel The Burning Heart of the World.

Ai Weiwei via Hyperallergic on Germany and the art world—never a mention of Gaza, but it underlies the whole piece. “Under most circumstances, society selects the most selfish, least idealistic among us to take on the work we call ‘art’ because that choice makes everyone feel safe.”

Nancy Kricorian

November 2, 2025

A Little Ray of Light

young man wearing an orange vest that says Ireland on it — Student on the evacuation bus

Mariam Kaba’s admonition to, “Choose your lane, find your people,” has brought me into familiar circles of organizing and activism on behalf of Palestine and has introduced me to new literary friends and political comrades. These relationships and the work we are doing together give me a sense of hope and purpose in this truly dismal moment.

As the deliberately engineered famine and relentless bombing continue in Gaza, as Israel flattens the last remaining buildings in Gaza City, and forces its residents to flee south into ever smaller areas, the U.S. is floating a plan to empty Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants so it can be turned into a casino on the Mediterranean. In the face of this fathomless cruelty and lawlessness, the majority of the world’s people stand with Palestine. The problem is that those in power are not holding Israel to account for its flagrant crimes, and the U.S., the U.K., and Germany are arming, covering for, and colluding in this horror. This genocide has ripped the mask off all our institutions in the west—it has shown the bankruptcy and venality of the government, the press, the academy, arts organizations, etc.

It’s grimly fascinating that images of intentionally starved children have prompted these leaders to at least SAY something about the crisis that has been created in Gaza. It seems that bombing, maiming, and killing tens of thousands of children are tolerable outcomes; but starving them is such a bad look that they have mumbled a few words of condemnation. Whether this turns into meaningful action like arms embargoes, boycotts, and sanctions remains to be seen.

A ray of light in all this has been the work I have done with a group of dedicated volunteers helping students in Gaza to find scholarships at Irish universities. Months of labor resulted in an evacuation of several dozen students to Ireland last week. After weeks of waiting, days of not being sure whether the evacuation would take place, and then a grueling 16-hour bus ride from Deir al Balah to Amman, these young people finally flew to Dublin. There was coverage in RTE of the arrival of the first group of students and this video at the Dublin airport features a young journalism student that I know. What a relief for them to have made their way to safety and to have found a way to continue their education after Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza. But what sadness they all feel about the families they left behind.

Getting to know these brilliant young people has been one of the privileges of my life. Our communications have been mainly through WhatsApp and Signal messages, voice memos, and occasional phone calls, and we have become friends without ever having been in a room together. As soon as they touched down in Ireland, I booked my plane ticket to Dublin. Inshallah—which is a word I have repeated so frequently lately that I’m thinking of having it tattooed on my arm in both Arabic and English—we will meet in the real world in October.

Nancy Kricorian

Shoulder to the Wheel

The horsemen of the apocalypse continue their rampage against immigrants, trans people, women, abortion, history, the environment, and dissent. Their motto seems to be: A fire on every corner, a fox in every henhouse, a grifter and thief with a hand in every till. Meanwhile, and relatedly, the Israeli government launched a war against Iran that the U.S. government joined, and while that seems to be over for the moment, these vile collaborators continue apace with a genocide in Gaza. All of this is demoralizing, but we must keep our proverbial shoulders to the wheel, and we need to do it together.

On a brighter note, Columbia graduate and former student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil was released from detention and returned to his wife and infant son in New York City. I was at the rally held on the steps of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on Sunday afternoon where Mahmoud spoke passionately about his personal ordeal and the suffering of the other men he met in the ICE detention facility in Louisiana. He said his imprisonment had only firmed his resolve to keep speaking out for Palestine. He then led a march to the gates of Columbia University to denounce the administration’s hypocrisy. His attorneys are still fighting the government’s attempts to have him deported because they claim that his speech is a “national security threat,” but at least now, he is home with his family.

Today is the mayoral primary election in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani is running neck-and-neck with bully and sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo. Because the city now uses ranked choice voting, the results will likely not be known until July 1^st. On a side note, I have known Zohran since he was 8 years old and an elementary school classmate of our oldest child. And no matter what the result, I have felt like a proud auntie watching his excellent and practically flawless campaign.

My friend Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian’s inspiring book FOREST EUPHORIA, which was published on May 27, is already a national bestseller, and you can read an excerpt of it on LitHub. Patty and I will be in conversation about the book on Saturday, 28 June at 1 p.m. on Zoom as part of the International Armenian Literary Alliance’s Literary Light Series. You may register to join us here.

The Massachusetts Review published two poems by friend and mentee Sahar Rabah, who is still in Gaza where starvation and daily bombardment continue and are barely covered in U.S. mainstream media. The MassReview also published my young friend T.S.’s powerful piece Why Must We Be Heroes? My mentee Nadera Mushtha’s piece about higher education in Gaza during a genocide was published by The Guardian.

Leila Sansour wrote a clear-eyed if devastating analysis of why Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against the entrapped and besieged Palestinians in Gaza. In the face of this depraved cruelty, her conclusion is that we must support the rebuilding of Palestinian society: “The strategy to confront it should therefore focus on unwavering commitment to rebuilding kinship, a sense of shared purpose, restoration of community, and civic dignity.”

Let’s follow the example of Ms. Rachel for Littles and do something every day that shows our commitment to creating a world where all children are cherished, where no children are bombed and starved, where families are not torn apart by masked thugs, and where all beings, human and non-human, are respected.

Yours,

Nancy K

P.S. I will be joining The Markaz Review Book Club’s meeting to discuss THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD on Zoom on Sunday, July 27 at 1 p.m. ET/19 CET. You can learn more about the book club and sign up for the event here.

June 24, 2025

Do Something: Advice for Dark Times

Cover of Virgina Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. A woman holding a paintbrush and canvas is standing in front of a stormy sea

His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at her feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet. In complete silence she stood there, grasping her paint brush.

~ Lily Briscoe’s response to Mr. Ramsay in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse

I’ve been thinking of this scene from To The Lighthouse, a novel that I have read at least a half dozen times, as the horsemen of the apocalypse continue their erratic assaults on all our systems and institutions. Of course, their doings are more depraved and destructive than Mr. Ramsay’s patriarchal self-pity and narcissism, but there is much to learn from Lily Briscoe’s refusal, her drawing her skirts closer to her ankles, and holding onto her paint brush as a tool and a weapon.

What is pooling at our feet is not water, but shit, because as Steve Bannon had recommended, they are spreading the stuff with great abandon. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told writer Michael Lewis in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Journalists are kept busy writing about the latest outrage, and the rest of us are barely able to react to one horrible news item before the next one appears. As AOC put it in a February Instagram live: “It’s important for you to understand that the paralysis and shock that you feel right now is the point,” she continued. “They are trying to induce a state of passivity among the general public.”

We must pay attention to what they are doing, but we can’t afford to let them overwhelm us with their crap to the point that we are paralyzed. I glance at the headlines, read various newsletters on topics that concern me, and check out the social media feeds of trusted sources who cover Palestine, the academy, immigration, climate catastrophe, abortion, and policing. During the horsemen’s last reign, a friend recommended a daily roundup curated by Matt Kiser called WTF Just Happened Today, and I find it particularly helpful—Kiser reads the day’s political news and starts with “what happened today in one sentence.” Below that are paragraphs with links going into more depth for those who are interested.

In addition to keeping abreast of the news (without being inundated), I try to push back against their cruelty in the way that I can each day. It’s up to each of us to decide what we care most about and to find the best people working on that issue and then to act. When people ask my spouse James what they should do in the face of the genocide in Gaza or any of the other depredations we are witnessing, he replies, “Do something.”

Yours in struggle,

Nancy K

READ & LISTEN

A long, thoughtful, and essential piece by Taner Akcam about the crisis in Holocaust and Genocide Studies brought about by the genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Publisher’s Weekly finally ran a review of THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD, saying, “…the lyrical latest from Nancy Kricorian…is an impactful story of trauma.”

A piece that I wrote about the Armenian genocide, Gaza, and Columbia that was published on April 24 by YES Magazine.

James’s speech at the 25-hour Columbia Speak Out (his is the second one).

I recorded a Podcast interview with Meat for Tea, and did a print interview with LibraryThing in which I discuss my research process, the female bildungsroman, and things Armenian.

May 14, 2025

novels

The Burning Heart of the World

All the Light There Was

Dreams of Bread and Fire

Zabelle

now

Doing and Undoing

The First of April

Stewing and Knitting

A Few Good Books

Comfort and Light

An Inspiring and Historic Win

A Weekend in Dublin

A Little Ray of Light

Shoulder to the Wheel

Do Something: Advice for Dark Times