post archive

I started the summer with late June week in Ireland. I went to visit Palestinian students from Gaza who were evacuated last August. I spent most of the time in Dublin with a day trip to the seaside town of Bray and a two-day foray to Limerick to take the large contingent of students out to dinner at the same Lebanese restaurant where we dined in October. The students were, overall, doing much better physically and emotionally than they were when I last saw them. But there was an undercurrent of sadness and suffering related to their new lives in exile and to anxiety about their families still in Gaza, where despite a supposed “ceasefire” the siege and daily killings continue.

In mid-July, Irish President Catherine Connolly hosted over 70 students from Gaza in an event that the President’s office touted widely and that was covered in the Irish press. My mentee and friend Sahar Rabah, a creative writing master’s student at Trinity College who was invited to offer some words, sent me the text of her speech, excerpted below:

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the people of Ireland for opening their hearts and their universities to us.

We arrived carrying uncertainty, worry for our families, and dreams that seemed impossible to continue. Here in Ireland, we found not only classrooms and libraries, but kindness, dignity, and a chance to keep believing in our future.

Education has given us more than a degree. It has given us hope, resilience, and the responsibility to use what we have learned to serve others and contribute to rebuilding our communities whenever that becomes possible.

On behalf of the students from Gaza, I would like to thank the Government of Ireland, our universities, our lecturers, and everyone who supported us throughout this journey. Your generosity will stay with us for the rest of our lives.

We hope that one day we can return home carrying knowledge instead of fear, and help build a future defined by education, opportunity, and peace.

The sad irony was that the next day, the Irish Embassy in Tel Aviv started issuing visa denials to the next cohort of students in Gaza awaiting evacuation. The students who received these letters, equally qualified as those from last year, were devastated. The visa process is being managed this year by the Departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs and the applications that were rejected this July were supported by the very same documentation that was accepted last year. Esraa, the student with a full scholarship to the National College of Art and Design with whom I have been working, was among those whose applications were rejected. We are now in the process of assembling materials for a potential appeal and will be consulting with lawyers in Ireland about the best strategy for Esraa and the other students whose educational futures are hanging in the balance.

On the literary front…

My favorite book so far this year is Harriet Clark’s beautifully written, brilliant, and mesmerizing novel The Hill told from the point of view of a girl who lives with her grandparents in New York City and makes weekly visits to her mother who is incarcerated in a women’s prison at the top of the eponymous hill.

The Jewish Currents On the Nose podcast interview with Clark provided a great introduction to Clark and the novel:

Harriet Clark comes from a long line of radicals. Her ancestors were gun runners in Minsk. Her grandparents were active members of the Communist Party USA, and the family moved to Moscow for a time, where her grandfather wrote for the Daily Worker. Her mother is Judith Clark, a former member of the Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization, who was given a life sentence for her participation in the Brinks robbery in 1981 that killed three people. (Judith was paroled in 2019.) Harriet Clark’s debut novel, The Hill, tells the story of a girl who vows to visit her mother every week in the upstate New York prison where she is being held. In this episode of On the Nose, Arielle Angel speaks with Harriet about her stunning new book, what comes after failure in radical movements, and the heroism of trying to keep families affected by incarceration together. 

Clark’s book was published within weeks of Zayd Ayers Dorhn’s memoir Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young: My Fugitive Family in the Revolution, which I also read and admired. Following up on his superbly produced 2022 podcast Mother Country Radicals, Dohrn’s book goes into greater detail about family life with his parents, Weather Underground members Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. The New York Times (gift link) ran an interesting double interview with Harriet Clark and Zayd Dohrn, who met for the first time for the purposes of the article.

Meanwhile over at PEN America, there were more shenanigans and controversy. When Chief Communications Officer Geraldine Baum, in a parting salvo written with two co-authors, published a dubious “blog” entitled “A Silent Moratorium” about the “silencing “of Israeli and Jewish writers that relied entirely on anecdotes and circumvented standard internal protocols for PEN reports, the proverbial shit hit the fan—there was coverage of the controversy in the New York Times (gift link). Then PEN America President Dinaw Mengestu resigned in protest and issued a letter explaining why. He also spoke with Josh Nathan-Kazis of Jewish Currents and had this to say:

If people are experiencing that kind of discrimination in publishing, which is the heart of PEN America’s work, we should care more than just providing anecdotal evidence. We should really try to document and show exactly how this happened. To do it so haphazardly is an offense. If this report were about discrimination against Black writers and this is what they did, I would be fucking enraged.

Many people were enraged, including Wellesley Professor of Jewish Studies and English Josh Lambert, who wrote on Substack:

But if we want to understand what is happening in contemporary literature and culture, we cannot simply take a survey of disgruntled writers and polemicists and then circulate their statements as fact. I did not talk to Mengestu, or even read his social media statements about why he stepped down as PEN president. But I would certainly be embarrassed to be associated with such a sloppy piece of work, especially one that is guaranteed to feed the pernicious weaponization of antisemitism.

In a 12 July Instagram post, Mengestu said, “I am not boycotting PEN America. Like many other writers who have reached out to me, I am walking away from it permanently, and I will do everything I can now to help make something better.” After 23 years as a member of PEN America, I declined to pay my dues in 2026, and I aspire to join him in that better place.

Yours in struggle,

Nancy

Nancy Kricorian

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

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

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.

The first phase of the Gaza ceasefire started on Sunday, and my friends in Gaza experienced the relief of knowing that they had survived fifteen months of a relentless and brutal military campaign against them. One friend went to the shore for the first time in months without fear of being killed by a drone or a quadcopter. Another said they felt joy akin to that of a national holiday, despite the devastating losses that they were still reckoning with. Much is still unknown about what comes next, but there is hope and there will be nights without the constant sounds of missiles, rockets, and drones. I have heard that Trump may force Netanyahu to stick to the phased agreement because Trump, ever in competition with Obama, wants a Nobel Peace Prize and he also wants a deal between Saudi and Israel. Trump has no ideological commitments, unlike Biden who is an avowed Zionist, and perhaps in this case his self-interest will result in something less horrible. May Gaza rise like a phoenix from these ashes and mounds of rubble.

With the ascendancy of Trump and his horsemen of the apocalypse, I’m going to take my news in controlled daily doses. They want us exhausted and demoralized, so we’re going to have to pace ourselves for the hard work ahead.

In other news, when esteemed fiction writer and Nobel laureate Alice Munro died in May 2024, the obituaries were full of praise and the remembrances were glowing. In July, Munro’s daughter Andrea Robin Skinner published a piece entitled, “My Stepdad Abused Me. My Mother Chose to Stay with Him” that reverberated like a bombshell throughout the literary world. Skinner detailed the sexual assault she suffered at the hands of Munro’s second husband and the woefully inadequate way that her parents responded to the abuse when they learned about it, her father months after the incident and her mother years later.

In the 80’s and 90’s, Munro had been one of my favorite writers, and I still have my copies of her books on the shelf. When I read her 1994 Paris Review interview, I had copied out a few lines that I loved into my book of quotations.

I’m doing less personal writing now than I used to for a very simple obvious reason. You use up your childhood, unless you’re able, like William Maxwell, to keep going back and finding wonderful new levels in it. The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home. Maybe it’s advisable to move on to writing those stories that are more observation.

In December, heavily researched pieces about the deeply disturbing story of her daughter’s abuse and Munro’s reactions to it, including ways the writer plumbed the experience in her fiction, were published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker. Writers took to social media to express their dismay and disappointment about someone they had considered to be a literary model, and there were a number of articles about how this new knowledge informs readings of her work.

Last week, New York Magazine dropped an article entitled “There is No Safe Word” about writer Neil Gaiman’s years of sexual predation, which he denied in a statement that I found less than convincing. His former spouse Amanda Palmer didn’t come off too well either. I wish I hadn’t encountered some of the grim details described in the piece, and you might want to read about the article rather than reading the thing itself.

What are we to do about the work we admire by people that we discover have done hideous things? Cultural critic Glen Wheldon has decided to keep past books, but not to engage with future work (which is not an option with Munro, who is no longer alive and writing). I often think about Louis Ferdinand Celine, whose vertiginous and compelling 1932 novel Voyage Au Bout de La Nuit I read and loved when I was a grad student in Paris. How to reconcile the fact that this brilliant author also wrote virulently anti-Semitic pamphlets and embraced fascism? In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik claims that, “You can’t separate what’s powerful about his writing from his vile anti-Semitism.” He goes on to suggest that the work and the man require a compound response: “an ability to admire, a refusal to censor, and a readiness to condemn.” I find myself, in this rare instance, agreeing with him.

Yours in struggle,

Nancy Kricorian

Recommended reading

Mohammed El-Kurd’s new book PERFECT VICTIMS will be published by Haymarket Books on February 11, and you can pre-order a copy here.

An excellent piece by Jane Partizpanyan via the Armenian Weekly about Genocide in Gaza, a media cover-up, and our moral obligation as Armenians.

Also from the Armenian Weekly, Armenian Women Bake Bread and Hope: “…during the blockade, we understood what bread truly means — standing in line all night for just one loaf and returning home empty-handed without knowing how to feed our children.”

Samia Saliba has made a list of 31 recommended SWANA books being published in the first half of 2025, and my novel THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD (which can be preordered here) is included.

Recommended viewing

Wonderful lecture on the origins of Armenian-American music by Ara Dinkjian via Houshamadyan.

Everything feels rather dire right now, from the awful clown show of American politics, to the terror of a burning planet, so I’ve again been finding solace in the natural world. I saw a Scarlet Tanager flitting through the tree canopy the other day, and after hearing its eerie, echoing song at the top of the ridge, I finally caught a glimpse of a Hermit Thrush. We have been eating oyster mushrooms and chanterelles that I foraged in the woods, as well as copious greens from our garden. And sunsets by the pond have been spectacular.

I just handed in the copy edited manuscript of my novel, The Burning Heart of the World, which will be published on April 1, 2025 by Red Hen Press, and can now be pre-ordered from Bookshop.org. A publisher decides how many copies to print in part based on the number of preorders, so ordering the book ahead is a good way to support an author, including yours truly. I have started scheduling events for April in Los Angeles, New York, and Detroit. If you want me to come to a bookstore (or a community center) near you, let me know. I will also be available for in-person and virtual reading group visits.

Also on the literary front, I was disappointed to read a terrible story about much admired and lauded fiction writer Alice Munro, but I loved this interview in Mizna with poet Chase Berggrun.

Last month my elder child Noah’s debut feature film, Summer Solstice, opened for limited runs in New York and Los Angeles. It received a rave review and was a Critic’s Pick in the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times review was also excellent. Noah did a number of interviews, among them one in Variety, one in Filmmaker, and another in Film Stage.

As Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza grinds into its tenth month, a small bright spot was the fact that Armenia recognized the Palestinian state. Mary Turfah’s piece Running Amok, about the horrific images Israeli soldiers are posting from Gaza and what they mean about Zionism past and present, was a tough read in the Baffler. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote a bracing piece about The Collapse of Zionism in the New Left Review. Some of my new organizer friends were involved in a Gaza protest during New York City’s Pride parade. I have started working with a new mentee in Gaza through We Are Not Numbers—a collaboration made difficult by the intermittent and poor Internet access Nadera has in Shujaya. I hope to be able to share one of her essays soon.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’re keeping cool.

Last week I gave the opening remarks at Freedom to Write for Palestine at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. This memorable gathering of writers was brilliantly curated and produced by Omar Hamilton and Sharif Kouddous of the Palestine Festival of Literature, and it was recorded for posterity. Writers Against the War on Gaza and Amplify Palestinerounded out the organizing team, and everyone’s efforts came together beautifully. Publishers Weekly and New York Magazine did great coverage of the event, placing it in the context of the controversy surrounding PEN America’s terrible response to the genocide in Gaza and the efforts of writers to hold the organization to account.

Here is an excerpt from my introduction:

While PEN America has organized a street rally in support of Ukrainian writers imprisoned and killed by Russia and taken a delegation of Ukrainian writers to meet with Congress, it has yet to organize any public event on behalf of Palestinian writers who have been imprisoned and killed by Israel. PEN International, English PEN, and PEN South Africa called for a ceasefire in Gaza five full months before PEN America did, and PEN America’s call came only after over a thousand writers had signed a letter denouncing the organization for its inaction. PEN America’s priorities so often align with the U.S. government’s own foreign policy goals that one writer quipped, ‘PEN America has been turned into an outpost of the U.S. State Department.’

While the leadership at PEN America is being roundly denounced for its double standards on Israel and Palestine, many of its staff members’ work in this area and on other issues is being stymied and undermined. We would like to give a shout out to PEN America United, the union representing PEN America’s staff, which has been trying to get a fair contract for over eighteen months. PEN’s Chief Executive Officer’s salary was disclosed to be $465,000 in 2022, and in recent contract negotiations management proposed a $48,500 minimum starting salary for staff, well below industry standards and hardly a living wage in New York City. In addition to her annual salary, which has likely increased over the past two years, PEN’s CEO earns an additional undisclosed six-figure yearly sum for serving on Meta’s Oversight Board. As one sign at a PEN America United rally phrased it, “Are fair wages banned too?”

The evening raised over $8,000 for We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led organization in Gaza that trains a new generation of Palestinian writers. At the top of the program, Michelle Alexander read a poem by my friend and WANN mentee Haya Abu Nasser. When WANN alumni Mahmoud Alyazji read a remembrance with an accompanying film about his best friend Mohammed Zaher Hammo, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike with his family, there were audible sounds of weeping in the audience, and I venture to say there was not a dry eye in the house. After musician Huda Asfourplayed a final song to close out the evening, which was by turns inspiring, moving, and galvanizing, we all headed out into the world with firm resolve to continue fighting for Palestinian freedom.

In the meantime, the situation in Gaza has grown increasingly catastrophic as Israel drops bombs on displaced, starving people living in tents, and gives confusing, impossible evacuation orders to families with no place to go. Repression at home continues to be brutal as riot police are summoned to break up peaceful student Gaza solidarity encampments. I have made a chant by the Columbia students a new motto, “Disclose, Divest. We will not stop. We will not rest.”

Nancy Kricorian

Jewish Voice for Peace protest in Washington, D.C., 18 October 2023

*

In the midst of all the terrible news, a brief post.

This is a good moment to recommend the work of my friend Adania Shibli, who has been in the crosshairs of the current wave of repression and the attempts to silence Palestinian voices. The scheduled awards ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair for her gem of a novel Minor Detail was canceled, setting off a firestorm of criticism, prompting withdrawals from the fair, and generating statements of solidarity. The furor has resulted in a mass run on her book, which is currently back ordered, but you can read the transcript of an excellent interview David Naimon did with her on his Between the Covers podcast and sample her spare and devastating style in this piece posted on LitHub.

What gives me comfort in this bleak, bleak moment? I find hope in the people who are standing against genocide despite it all. Yesterday my friends at Jewish Voice for Peace organized an inspiring mass protest in Washington, D.C. calling for an immediate ceasefire. They are saying that Jewish grief must not be used as a weapon of war. (About the suffering in Israel, and the weaponization of grief, please read Gabriel Winant’s excellent piece in Dissent.) And a handful of brave members of Congress, led by Representative Cori Bush (to date all of them black and brown except for Massachusetts’ Jim McGovern) have introduced legislation calling for an immediate ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

And here I will trot out my old motto from Grace Paley: The only recognizable feature of hope is action. Here are actions you can take today.

Contact your representatives to call for a ceasefire.

Donate to UNWRA, MECA, or to my friends at Sunbula for their partners in Gaza. A longer list of trusted charitable organizations can be found here.

Find a demonstration near you.

Talk with your family and friends about Gaza. The IMEU has a great explainer here.

Lastly, please check out this Books for Artsakh auction fundraiser. My donation to the auction can be bid on here.

Nancy Kricorian

“Too much of a past, too little ahead, but wait a minute, we always lived day to day, so where’s the difference?”

~ Etel Adnan, Shifting the Silence (2020)

*

Last week my friend Barbara Harris passed away after a long illness, and Gerry, her beloved husband of 67 years, asked me to speak about her activism at the funeral this Monday. Barbara and I met in 2003 through CODEPINK NYC and worked closely together for over 13 years. In 2008, The New York Times ran a profile of Barbara and the campaign she organized working to keep predatory military recruiters from targeting vulnerable high school students. Mel, a former CODEPINK NYC staff member commented, “Barbara was a gift to the anti-war movement and the activist community. Whenever she showed up to a demo, I felt like things were going to be okay. She had so much knowledge and such a calming presence. Cristina and I joked about making Barbara dolls to carry around for reassurance when things got rough.”

And speaking of things getting rough, yesterday Azerbaijan launched a full scale military assault against the people of Artsakh, announcing the planned “evacuation” of the Armenian population. Of course, anyone who was following the news could have seen this coming, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating. The use of the word “evacuation” clearly indicates a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Governments, NGO’s, and human rights groups have issued condemnations, but the shelling and terror continued undeterred. The Azerbaijani Army is known for its torture and beheading of captured Armenian soliders, and even civilians are fair game for their violence and cruelty. The fourth century Amaras Monastery, established by St. Gregory the Illuminator, is now under Azerbaijani control. And if the Azerbaijani government stays true to form, they will say that it’s an “Albanian Christian” monument and sandblast the Armenian inscriptions. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating to watch all this happening in real time on social media while the world does nothing. And Turkey’s ever helpful Erdogan announced at the U.N. General Assembly yesterday that Armenia must open the so-called “Zanzegur Corridor” allowing Azerbaijani passage through the territory of the sovereign Armenian Republic. This morning a “ceasefire” was announced and the Azerbaijani army took full control of the area. I’m dreading what comes next. You can follow what is going on via live updates from EVN Report and you can contact your elected officials using this tool from the Armenian Assembly of America.

Yesterday I also received word from my literary agent that she was closing on the last few open points in the contract for my new novel with Red Hen Press, a small, independent, non-profit publisher based in Pasadena. Red Hen will publish The Burning Heart of the World, a novel about an Armenian family in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, in 2025. This submission process was long and grueling, and I cannot tell you what a relief it is that the book has found a home, and with a press whose values align with so many of mine.

I’m leaving on Friday for a two-week trip called “The Mushrooms and Culture of Greece.” My friend Betsy and I will be traveling to Zagori in northwestern Greece with a group tour led by several radical mycologists. If you follow me on social media, expect to see lots of photos of mushrooms, food-laden tables, mountain villages, and the rocky shore.

Day to day, I try to open my heart to the sweetness of this tough world.

P.S. For your reading pleasure, here’s an interview with our filmmaker progeny. And here’s an article about The Wisdom of Fungi.

Nancy Kricorian

My essay “Language Lessons” is included in a forthcoming anthology edited by Aram Mrjoian entitled WE ARE ALL ARMENIAN. Among the eighteen contributors are my friends Nancy Agabian, Liana Aghajanian, Chris Bohjalian, Scout Tufankjian, and Hrag Vartanian. My friends Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian designed the beautiful cover. The jacket text describes the project thus:

We Are All Armenianbrings together established and emerging Armenian authors to reflect on the complications of Armenian ethnic identity today. These personal essays elevate diasporic voices that have been historically silenced inside and outside of their communities, including queer, multiracial, and multiethnic writers. The eighteen contributors to this contemporary anthology explore issues of displacement, assimilation, inheritance, and broader definitions of home.

The publication date is March 14, 2023 and pre-orders are being accepted now. Pre-orders are crucial because if they are strong the publisher is motivated to do more publicity and marketing for the title. You can go to the University of Texas Press site and use  the discount code UTXM25 to receive 25% off and free shipping. If you have a good connection with your university or public library, please request that they purchase a copy.

If you are in the New York City area save the evening of Monday April 3rd for a launch event at Columbia University. More details to follow.

Nancy Kricorian