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Hi there,

Today I am delighted to be arts calling novelist Nancy Kricorian! (https://nancykricorian.net)

About our guest:

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 has been continuously in print since 1998. Her new novel, The Burning Heart of the World, about Armenians in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, will be published in April 2025. 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 with Teachers & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools, and has been a mentor with We Are Not Numbers since 2015. 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 Award, among other honors. She lives in New York.

THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD, now available from Red Hen Press!

Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Nancy Kricorian’s The Burning Heart of the World tells the story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War. Returning to the fabular tone of Zabelle, her popular first novel, Kricorian conjures up the lost worlds and intergenerational traumas that haunt a family in permanent exile. Leavened with humor and imbued with the timelessness of a folktale, The Burning Heart of the World is a sweeping saga that takes readers on an epic journey from the mountains of Cilicia to contemporary New York City. > Like colorful miniatures–from a childhood of elders haunted by the Armenian genocide, to girlhood and adolescence amidst war in Beirut, to marriage and children in New York at the time of 9/11—Nancy Kricorian finds just the right scale to bring her heroine’s passage to vivid, reverberating life. > — Aram Saroyan > An arrestingly beautiful novel of how families draw us together, but also push us apart. Set amidst the backdrop of displacement and war, The Burning Heart of the World illuminates how we carry history deep into even the most forgotten corners of ourselves. Once you start reading about Vera and her family you won’t be able to put this book down. > — Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Author of The Evening Hero Thanks for this amazing conversation, Nancy! All the best!

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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro.

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Much love,

j

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