now

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.

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

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

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

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