As part of their Celebrating Pride series, the Armenian Institute kindly invited me to submit the following short essay. I am grateful for their support.

“This month, the Queer Armenian Library, the International Armenian Literary Alliance, and Hye-Phen Magazine co-hosted a panel and a reading of Queer Armenian writers. Two events of historic significance. Certainly prior to this there have been readings of Queer Armenian writers and facilitated discussions, but two global events through Zoom with writers and attendees from Yerevan to Los Angeles was certainly historic.

These events confirm an epochal moment for Armenian literature. Never have we had a genre which we can call Queer Armenian literature. Over the past two decades dozens of writers of novels, poetry, memoirs, short stories, and essays created it. Against the odds in some cases. Many authors wrote in isolation. In other cases, Queer literary organizers published anthologies and launched digital platforms, but did so in opposition to, or without the support of, Armenian organizations. And this work builds on the pioneers of the twentieth century, from poets like Charents and Tekeyan, to fiction writer George Stambolian, and memoirist Arlene Voski Avakian.

Yet, after these two events I am hesitant to continue to call it a genre. We may have a literary movement on our hands. We generally know literary movements as the “—isms” (realism, romanticism, naturalism, etc.); and, while bookstores would call Queer Armenian literature a genre and then place it on the subgenre bookshelves of Armenian literature or LGBTQ literature, the more likely comparison may be the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Arts movement or the New York School.”

To read the full essay, please visit the Armenian Institute.