![]() |
Lusine Kharatyan is an Armenian writer and anthropologist. She studied at Yerevan State University, Cairo Demographic Center, and the University of Minnesota. She is known for her works of fiction, among which are:
A Syrian Affair was a winner of the EU Prize for Literature. Kharatyan is based in Yerevan. [1] [2]
Magda Szabó was a Hungarian novelist. Doctor of philology, she also wrote dramas, essays, studies, memoirs, poetry and children's literature. She was a founding member of the Digital Literary Academy, an online digital repository of Hungarian literature. She is the most translated Hungarian author, with publications in 42 countries and over 30 languages.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Gohar Gasparyan, also known as the "Armenian nightingale", was an Armenian opera singer.
Colette Khoury is a Syrian novelist and poet, born in 1931, who is also the granddaughter of former Syrian Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury. Khoury graduated from Damascus University with a bachelor's degree in French literature and she received a diploma from the school of literature in Beirut. Khoury's notability stirs from her work in politics and literature. Her work as a writer focuses on love and erotica, a subject that was previously taboo in Syrian literature.
Syrian literature is modern fiction written or orally performed in Arabic by writers from Syria since the independence of the Syrian Arab Republic in 1946. It is part of the historically and geographically wider Arabic literature. Literary works by Syrian authors in the historical region of Syria since the Umayyad era are considered general Arabic literature. In its historical development since the beginnings of compilations of the Quran in the 7th century and later written records, the Arabic language has been considered a geographically comprehensive, standardized written language due to the religious or literary works written in classical Arabic. This sometimes differs considerably from the individual regionally spoken variants, such as Syrian, Egyptian or Moroccan spoken forms of Arabic.
The European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), established in 2009, is a European Union literary award. Its aim is to recognise outstanding new literary talents from all over Europe, to promote the circulation and translation of literature amongst European countries, and to highlight the continent's creativity and diversity.
Dima Wannous is a Syrian literary writer and journalist. She studied French literature at Damascus University and the University of Paris - Sorbonne. She also studied translation in France and has lived in Beirut, where she worked for the newspapers Al-Hayat and As-Safir. She has also worked for broadcast media.
Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist. She studied Arabic literature at Tishreen University (Latakia). She has written in a wide variety of genres including novels, short stories, film scripts, television dramas, film and TV criticism, and literary narratives. Several of her works have been translated from the Arabic original into other languages.
Maha Hassan is a Syrian-Kurdish journalist and novelist. A native Kurdish speaker, she writes in Arabic. In 2000, she was banned from publishing in Syria for her "morally condemnable" writing, and since August 2004, she has been living in exile in Paris.
Katya Galstyan is a cross-country skier competing for Armenia. She competed for Armenia at the 2014 Winter Olympics in the 10 kilometre classical race, finishing in 64th place out of 76 competitors. She was the only woman to represent her country at the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics.
Fadi Azzam is a Syrian novelist and poet. Two of his novels in Arabic have been longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. In 2011, his debut novel Sarmada was published in English and in 2020 in a German edition. After the outbreak of the war in Syria, he went into exile in the United Kingdom. His work is part of contemporary Syrian literature in the context of war and imprisonment.
Hranush Kharatyan is an Armenian ethnographer. She also specialises in Caucasus studies, minority groups and Armenian studies. She has been a member of the Pre-Parliament civil initiative since November 2012.
Shevaun Mizrahi is a Turkish-American documentary filmmaker. She received a Jury Special Mention Award at the Locarno Film Festival 2017 for her documentary film Distant Constellation among many other awards including the Best Picture Prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival 2018 and the FIPRESCI Critics Prize at the Viennale 2018. Indiewire wrote, “Distant Constellation is one of the more exciting achievements in nonfiction cinema in recent memory." She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Film in 2015 and is the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. In December 2018, she received the Best Cinematography Award from the International Documentary Association.
Jennifer Croft is an American author, critic and translator who translates works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. With the author Olga Tokarczuk, she was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights. In 2020, she was awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her autofictional memoir Homesick.
Anna Kim is an Austrian writer.
The Baba-Hadji Mausoleum is an Islamic Mausoleum and shared Armenian-Azerbaijani pilgrimage site built in the late 16th or early 17th century and located near the Shvanidzor village of Armenia some seventeen kilometres to the east of Meghri. In 1926 Lisitsian wrote that: "Baba Haji was a Turk and Armenian pilgrimage site not very far from the abandoned Armenian village of Gyumerants or Gumerants, and near the former Armenian village Bolishen."
Aram Pachyan is an Armenian writer. He is considered one of the most prominent representatives of the post-Soviet generation of Armenian authors. He was born in Vanadzor in 1983 to the family of noted war surgeon Hakob Tamamyan. Pachyan studied law at Yerevan State University, graduating in 2004, after which he dedicated himself to writing. His early work was published in the literary newspaper Grakan Tert, and then in other literary journals such as Gretert, Eghitsi Luys, and Narcis. He works as a journalist at the Hraparak newspaper. He also writes for the radio, and in 2012 had his own radio show "At the Library with Aram Pachyan" on 106.5 Armenian News Radio.
The 2022 Armenian protests were a series of anti-government protests in Armenia that started on 5 April 2022. The protests continued into June 2022, and many protesters were detained by police in Yerevan. Protestors demanded Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan resign over his handling of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. On 14 June 2022, the opposition announced their decision to terminate daily demonstrations aimed at toppling Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after failing to achieve popular support.
Rima Bali is a Syrian writer of contemporary Arabic fiction. The author of four novels, she is mostly known for having been shortlisted for the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) based in Abu Dhabi and mentored by the Booker Prize Foundation in London.
Maud Simonnot is a French writer and editor.