BOSTON — The Regional Executive Committee of Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society of Eastern United States announces the winner of the 4th Minas and Kohar Tölölyan Prize in Contemporary Literature, Christopher Atamian for his poetry collection entitled A Poet in Washington Heights. The book is forthcoming from Nauset Press.
Atamian was the winner of the inaugural Minas and Kohar Tölölyan Prize in Contemporary Literature, for his translation of Nigoghos Sarafian’s The Bois de Vincennes.
Atamian is a translator, writer and director. In 2006, he produced the OBIE Award-winning play “Trouble in Paradise” and was included as an invited artist to the 2009 Venice Biennale for his video “Desire.” His short films and videos have screened throughout the world and he appears regularly in such publications as the Huffington Post and the New York Times, and was for several years the dance critic for the now-defunct New York Press. Atamian has written one novel, Speaking French, and is at work on several commercial musicals and film scripts.
In his work as a translator, Atamian has translated six books from French and Western Armenian into English, including Nigoghos Sarafian’s The Bois de Vincennes, and three for Columbia University’s Middle Eastern Studies Department: Krikor Beledian’s Fifty Years of Armenian Literature in France, and Marc Nichanian’s Literature and Catastrophe and The Armenian Language Throughout History. He has also translated Philippe Delma’s The Rosy Future of War (The Free Press) and is currently at work on Denis Donikian’s Vidures/Offal, an award-winning novel published on Actes Sud.
Atamian has worked in senior positions for leading media companies, including ABC, Ogilvy Interactive, and JP Morgan’s marketing division. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his MBA from Columbia Business School, and is also an alumnus of USC Film School. He has been a Fulbright, Bronfman, and Gulbenkian Scholar.
Atamian has been active in the Armenian community since he was a teenager and has served on the board of the Columbia Center for Armenian Studies and as executive director of the Armenia Fund USA. He was the elected president two years running of the Armenian Gay and Lesbian Association of NY (AGLA NY) and currently sits on this organization’s board of trustees.
