novels

The Burning Heart of the World

now

As the Armenian proverb puts it, The world is wide, but what use is it if my heart is narrow? How can we resist the urge to turn our faces away from the grim and ongoing spectacle of wholesale and retail slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon, massacres and land theft which are being perpetrated with our tax dollars and with the full-throated support of our government? The raging dumpster fires on every corner both domestically and internationally are designed to make us shrug and turn our backs. Most days when the big picture is overwhelming, I try to do even one small thing to make the world a little less cruel. And in coming together with other people—whether that be with my teammates at the Gaza Scholarship Initiative (GSI) or with my neighbors in our Morningside Rapid Response group—we find and create hope. There is hope in the work we do together, there is hope in Zohran Mamdani, the dynamic young mayor of New York City, and there is hope in supporting one person at a time as part of a broader movement for systemic change.

James and I are helping to raise funds for a talented young artist and writer in Gaza. She has been accepted with a fee waiver to a master’s program at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin, but in order to qualify for a student visa she needs money for her evacuation, resettlement, and living expenses. You can read more about her and donate here.

One of my GSI mentees, Asem Aljerjawi, has written an eloquent and moving piece about his life in Dublin after surviving genocide in Gaza and while his family is still suffering there.

Anti- and non-Zionist Jewish Columbia faculty, including James and a number of our friends who are quoted in this Guardian piece, have filed claims with Trump’s “antisemitism fund.”

On his podcast Why Is This Happening? Chris Hayes spoke with Timnit Gebru about the ethics of AI. I found the discussion illuminating. “Timnit Gebru founded the Distributed AI Research Institute after her high-profile exit from Google’s Ethical AI team.” After you listen to the episode, check out the AI Resist List.

M. Gessen wrote a sobering analysis of the batshit crazy ALIENS webpage the White House launched about ten days ago. When I saw it I assumed it had sprung directly from the brain of Stephen Miller.

Now repeat after me:

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)

The voice of the people is louder than the roar of the cannon. (Armenian proverb)

Let’s go!

Nancy

June 8, 2026

Proverbs for a Friend’s Baby on Her Baptism

Armenian needlelace doily

This past Sunday, I was among those offering blessings at the baptism of a friend’s baby. In preparation, I paged through several anthologies and lists of Armenian proverbs that I have collected over the years and made and arranged the selection below.

Let’s sit crooked and talk straight.

The sun will rise whether the rooster crows or not.

Spring comes on the wings of the nightingale.

Birds fly with their wings, people with their kin.

Measure ten times, cut once.

Say it once, listen a thousand times.

Education is a golden bracelet.

You are as many people as the languages you know.

It is better to carry stones with a wise man than to eat pilaf with a fool.

A good tree is better than a bad person.

A lone walnut cannot make noise in a sack.

From heart to heart there is a path.

Tell me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are.

Be neither sweet and swallowed, nor sour and spurned.

Let it be one and fine.

A mother’s blessing will lift the curse of seven priests.

Nancy Kricorian

May 25, 2026

Spring Migration

Birds fly with their wings, people with their kin. ~ Armenian proverb

group of bird watchers with an instructor showing a map of bird nest locations — Photo by Kendrick Fowler

The other day as I was driving along a country road to my volunteer job at the used bookstore that raises funds for our local public library upstate, I listened to the news on NPR. By the time I arrived at my destination, after hearing story after story about violence, cruelty, and corruption, my nerves were jangling. In the shop, the manager, who was sorting through donations, handed me a ten-year-old non-fiction book about characters in American history who had been devoted to the ideas of democracy and decency. She said, “Do you think anyone will buy this or should we get rid of it?” I answered, “It’s about people trying not to do bad things, which could be instructive at this moment.”

Another thing that I find helpful in this troubling time is being out in the natural world among wildflowers, mushrooms, red newts, frogs, butterflies, and birds. And during spring migration, the birds are especially diverting.

On May 8^th I joined staff members of the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program (FEP) for a bird walk on their 900-acre farm in Columbia County, New York. The highlight of the walk was an open field where we saw six male Bobolinks in their spectacular black, white, and yellow breeding plumage. Bobolinks, who spend the winter in South America, have a 6,000-mile journey to return to their spring breeding grounds in North America. They make their nests on the ground in open fields and grasslands, and modern hay mowing practices have contributed to their annual 2% decline since 1966 in the U.S. Hawthorne Valley delays mowing in one large field to give the Bobolinks an opportunity to successfully breed.

Last week, at the height of spring migration, I went on three bird walks in Central Park: one with my friend and bird guide Gabriel Willow starting at the 81^st Street and Central Park West entrance, one with New York City Bird Alliance’s Tod Winston in the North Woods, and the third with The Linnaean Society of New York, also in the North Woods. Central Park is one of New York City’s top birding locations, particularly during spring migration when over 25 million birds fly over the city on their routes north. Many of them pause for a day or two in our area. As Tod told the Upper West Side Rag, “During migration, birds kind of funnel into New York City parks in this really high concentration, which is what makes New York City a world-renowned birding spot…” On Thursday with Tod, we saw 62 species of birds, including 5 Scarlet Tanagers, and an array of warblers, among them Blackburnian, Chestnut-Sided, Blackpoll, Magnolia, Hooded, Canada, Nashville, Tennessee, and Cape May.

How’s that for diversion?

Yours in struggle,

Nancy Kricorian

READ and LISTEN

I have been mentoring a young writer from Gaza named Sahar Rabah, who is currently enrolled in the creative writing master’s program at Trinity Dublin (she is one of 50+ students the Gaza Scholarship Initiative assisted with university applications that resulted in their evacuations to Ireland in August/September 2025). Earlier this month it was announced that Sahar had won the Calibre Essay Prize from the Australian Book Review. Her elegant, powerful, and devastating essay entitled “Between Reality and Dreams” is behind a paywall and if you would like me to send you a PDF, please let me know.

My novel THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD was featured in this list of works celebrating Armenian mothers and grandmothers.

On this episode of his podcast WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Chris Hayes interviews cognitive scientist and UC Berkeley professor Alison Gopnik about intelligence, AI, and learning. Gopnik argues that a typical two-year-old routinely outsmarts the most advanced AI models.

I just finished reading and highly recommend Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s new book Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, & Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. It is a fascinating combination of family and social history about Dohrn’s parents Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, members of the radical revolutionary group The Weather Underground, and their lives and times. It expands on themes and materials that he used in his riveting 2022 podcast series MOTHER COUNTRY RADICALS.

May 19, 2026

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

novels

The Burning Heart of the World

All the Light There Was

Dreams of Bread and Fire

Zabelle

now

The World Is Wide

Proverbs for a Friend’s Baby on Her Baptism

Spring Migration

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