Shushan Avagyan (born 1976) is an Armenian author, translator and Associate Professor at the American University of Armenia's College of Humanities and Social Sciences, where she is the coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Translation Program. [1] [2] [3]
Avagyan has translated into English a volume of Shushanik Kurghinian’s poetry, as well as works by Russian critics Boris Arvatov and Viktor Shklovsky. [4] Her articles and translations have been published in academic journals including: Contemporary Women's Writing , The Review of Contemporary Fiction , Asymptote, and The Los Angeles Review of Books . [5] [6] In 2003, she co-founded the Women's Resource Center in Yerevan with Lara Aharonian and Gohar Shahnazaryan. [7]
Avagynan's debut novel, Girq-anvernagir (A Book,Untitled), was published in 2006. The English translation was a winner of the English PEN Translates Award in 2023. [8]
Avagynan was born in 1976 in Soviet Armenia. As a child, she lived in Zambia and Ethiopia with her parents, who taught there due to the Soviet Teach Abroad Program. After graduating from Khachik Dashtents School in Yerevan, she moved to Cyprus to study at the Melkonian Educational Institute in Nicosia. She received her undergraduate degree in studio art at Cedar Crest College, and her master's and doctoral degrees in English studies from Illinois State University. [1]