Literary Lights 2025: Featuring Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

The International Armenian Literary Alliance’s June edition of their Literary Lights 2025 reading series features Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, professor, curator and author of Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, in conversation with award-winning writer Nancy Kricorian. The virtual event, cosponsored by GALAS LGBTQ+ Armenian Society, will take place on June 28, 2025, at 10:00 AM Pacific | 1:00 PM Eastern | 9:00 PM AMT.

Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness of all the life around us. Fungal species, we learn, commonly encompass more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, a mystery that scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprises, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world.

Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, and a professor of biology with Bard Prison Initiative. Her research focuses on fungal taxonomy, diversity and evolution, as well as queer theory and philosophy of science. Her debut book Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, is a collection of essays challenging our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Nancy Kricorian, who was born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, is the author of four novels about post-genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, was adapted as a play and had been continuously in print since 1998. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review, and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, and New York University, as well as Teacher & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools and for the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Anahid Literary Ward. She lives in New York City. Sign up for the author’s newsletter here.

Literary Lights 2025 is a monthly reading series organized by IALA, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center. Each event—held online or in-person—will feature a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members. Keep an eye on our website and socials for the exact dates of each event. Read along with the series by purchasing titles from the IALA Bookstore powered by Bookshop.