Wrapping up the 2024
As the holiday season approaches, we extend our sincere wishes on Christmas and New Year to all our dear colleagues, partners, and friends. May the warmth and joy of this magical time inspire new beginnings, multiply success stories, and strengthen the bonds of our collaboration. We wish you a festive season filled with peace, love, and happiness, and may 2025 bring exciting opportunities, and allow us all to celebrate the power of literature together!
Taking this opportunity ARI Literature Foundation would like to share with you a short overview of 2024. Summing up the outcomes and results of our work, we once again state and confirm the ability of literature to connect, inspire and change the world!
PROJECT UPDATE
Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Series
Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Series, Round 2 was launched at the beginning of the year. The second series aims at translating 10 important books on humanities, social sciences, art and translation into Armenian. The publication of the first book of the series The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller by Carlo Ginzburg was out in September and was presented in Yerevan with the participation of the author himself.
Write in Armenia International Writing Camp
Write in Armenia International Writing Camp project had a special edition on June 17-21 entitled Documenting Reality: Fiction vs Journalism. The Project was implemented in cooperation with Kalem Kultur (Turkey), and funded by Eurasia Partnership Foundation. The project aimed to promote a continuous dialogue between the new generation of writers and journalists from Armenia and Turkey. Watch the video report of the project.
Inclusive Comics: Visual Stories from Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine
Inclusive Comics: Visual Stories from Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine project in the framework of the EU Creative Europe Programme started in 2023. This year the projects offered a number of webinars as well as residencies in Armenia, Germany and the Netherlands for the illustrators, writers and editor of the project. The final result of the project, a comics book with three graphic stories will come out in 2025.
Webinars in the frames of Inclusive Comics: Visual Stories from Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine project
Black Sea Lit Project
In 2023 ARI Literature Foundation became the partner of the Goethe Center Yerevan in the implementation of the transcultural literature project Geschichten vom Schwarzen Meer – Black Sea Lit. The project endorses and supports the dialog with the Black Sea region authors from Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Ukraine to engage them in conversation about and beyond the region. The project hosted a residency in Armenia in July 2024.
FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2024
This has been the second year that ARI Literature Foundation in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Foundation and support from the RA Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports held a panel discussion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which was entitled Looking for a Place – Armenian Literature in Europe (follow the link for the full video). The speakers of the panel were writers Anoush Kocharyan, Aram Pachyan, Sargis Hovsepyan, and literary critic Tigran Amiryan. The panel was moderated by Jürgen Jakob Becker, Deputy Managing Director, curator of the literary program at Literarische Colloquium Berlin.
ARI PRESS
2024 was marked by the release of three books.
The first one was Yan Shenkman’s Here in Yerevan, a bitter and funny story about emigration, Armenia, war, built on personal experience and connected by one lyrical protagonist, written in the original language of the author – Russian. The Armenian translation of the book was released in December.
ARI Press also published Ruben Filyan’s Unknown Self Biography. The novel The Ambassador of Your Country by Filyan was published by ARI Press in 2023, and we are planning to continue this series with books by other underground writers of the late Soviet era, such as Avetik Darbinyan’s The Whale’s Fountain, to be published in January 2025.
FUNDRAISER FOR THE "ARMENIAN LITERARY ODYSSEY - FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL" PROJECT
In 2023-2024, the ARI Literature Foundation collaborated with the Armenian Society of Fellows (ASOF), an organization providing expertise, resources, and support for building coalitions and securing funding for key initiatives. ASOF has endorsed ARI’s long-standing Discover Armenian Literature Project, paving the way for future fundraising and implementation.
Transparent infrastructure has been established to facilitate global fundraising, ensuring seamless cooperation between funders, government, and implementing organizations. This multicomponent project aims to promote Armenian literature and culture worldwide. The vision of the project’s final result is Armenia Guest of Honor at Frankfurt Book Fair.
To learn more, watch the detailed project video. To contribute financially, please contact ARI Literature Foundation at [email protected] or ASOF’s cultural branch, SIREH, at [email protected].
If you would like to make a US tax-deductible donation, you may send the funds to our partner, The Armenian Society of Fellows (ASOF), which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, with offices in the US and Armenia.
We look forward to 2025, to another literary chapter at our Foundation, aimed at making an impact together with our partners and friends!