8/7 @7pm - Group Reading: Hrayr Varaz
Hrayr Varaz/ Հրայր Վարազ ? is a white, bearded queer cis-male Western Armenian-ist, Yelamu-based (SF) twitter-poet dancer linguist, sexpert intensity flow-er, ?ftografr ?
Tina Demirdjian's first book, IMPRINT, is published thanks to a grant from the City of Glendale’s Arts and Culture Commission and additional funding from the Durfee Foundation. A selection of Demirdjian’s poems have appeared in Aspora, Ararat International Journal, the Los Angeles Times, High Performance, Midwest Poetry Review, the Texas Observer, and in Birthmark: a bi-lingual anthology of Armenian-American poetry published in 1999. She is the recipient of three honorable mentions from the Arroyo Arts Collective’s Poetry in the Windows contests.
Ms. Demirdjian has taught poetry in schools, libraries and community centers throughout Los Angeles since 1991. Teaching, for Ms. Demirdjian, is the vehicle that allows her the opportunity to best serve the community in which she lives.
Lory Bedikian is the author of The Book of Lamenting (Anhinga Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She teaches poetry workshops in Los Angeles.
Arthur Kayzakian is the winner of the 2021 Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series award for his collection, The Book of Redacted Paintings, which was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is also the winner of the Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition for his chapbook, My Burning City. He has been a finalist for the Locked Horn Press Chapbook Prize, Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, the C.D. Wright Prize, the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and the Black River Chapbook Competition. He is a contributing editor at Poetry International and a recipient of the Minas Savvas Fellowship. He serves as the Poetry Chair for the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from several publications including Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, Portland Review, Chicago Review, Nat. Brut, Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness Magazine, and Prairie Schooner