LOS ANGELES — The International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) has awarded $2,500 to Lori Yeghiayan Friedman for her work-in-progress, How to Survive a Genocide, and $3,000 to Taline Voskeritchian and Christopher Millis to co-translate of Deserts of Heaven by Krikor Beledian, and to Lilit Hayrapetyan to translate Aftershocks by Nadia Owasu.
IALA has also announced runners up for its 2024 grants – applicants who hold great promise: Liana Aramyan for the Israelyan Armenian Translation Grant, and Sarah Elgatian for the Creative Writing Grant.
Lori Yeghiayan Friedman is an Armenian-American from Los Angeles. Her father was an Armenian from Ethiopia and her mother an Armenian from Palestine. She holds an MFA in theatre from the University of California San Diego and much of her writing explores themes of performance and the roles we play. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines and other outlets including: Mizna, Consequence Forum, phoebe, Longleaf Review, Memoir Land and the Los Angeles Times. Her piece, “The Emperor’s Dentist,” was recently nominated for Best of the Net by the journal Atlas and Alice. Her essay, “How to Survive a Genocide,” published in Exposition Review, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Highlights of her work can be seen on her Linktree.
Taline Voskeritchian has published widely in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East; her prose and translations have appeared in the London Review of Books, The Nation, Bookforum, Words without Borders, Journal of Palestine Studies, The Markaz Review, Jadaliyya, and other publications. Co-producer and translator of the documentary Վահէ Օշական՝ Միջնարար (Vahé Oshagan: Between Acts) on the modernist Armenian poet, she has taught at Boston University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and American University of Armenia and has conducted translation seminars for the Palestine Festival of Literature.
Christopher Millis is the author of four books of poetry, including The Handsome Shackles, Impossible Mirrors, and translations of the Italian poet Umberto Saba, The Dark of the Sun, for which he received a Fulbright Grant. The recipient of awards from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Massachusetts Arts Council, his Off Broadway productions include the libretto for Jean Erdman’s dance opera The Shining House and Garbage Boy, first produced in 2006 by the New York International Fringe Festival. The former art critic for The Boston Phoenix, he has taught at Boston University, New York University and Fordham University.
Voskeritchian and Millis’ collaborative translations from Krikor Beledian have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, International Poetry Review, Asymptote, and Wasafiri.
