Arpi Voskanian
Arpi Voskanian (b. 1978, Stepanavan) is a poet and fiction writer. She studied directing at the State Institute for Theater and Film in Yerevan and art history at the Art Academy of Yerevan. She started writing at the age of five, and her work was first published in 1990. Owing to the shocking bravura with which she negates moral and aesthetic norms in her collection of prose-poems and experimental pieces Tsik (2001), the work came to lie at the heart of a long literary discussion.
After the events that followed the 2008 elections, she turned her back on the literary press, regarding it as an institution out of touch with reality, reflecting neither the hopes of society nor the suffering of the people. She prefers to publish in periodicals aligned with the political opposition. That had repercussions on her literary style.
In 2012, together with her husband and the prose writer Hambardzum Hambardzumyan, she established the literary website Groghutsav, which aims to stimulate ‘responsible’ literature that engages closely with social, political and cultural facts, thereby giving shape and form to the newest trend within contemporary Armenian literature.
Her short-stories collection Not for sale was published in 2016. The book is a collection of short-stories written in the last two decades, that cover author's journey from adolescence to current age. It follows the transformations undergone in her visionary, aestetic and stylistic perceptions also tracing trajectories of Armenian contemporary literature in that period.
Books
Not for sale, collection of short-stories, Yerevan, 2016
Maradona and Ronaldinho, fairy-tale, 2011
Anterudus, Poems, Yerevan, 2010
Tsik, poems in prose and opuses, Yerevan 2001
Awards
2007- “The best annual poetry series” Award, "Gretert" Literary Magazine
2012- "1988" Award , "SKIL" Fund
2012-"Prose 2012" Award "Antares" publishing house
2013 - "Prose 2013" Award, "Antares" publishing house
2014- "Tigran Hayrapetyan” Award, "Haykakan Zhamanak" daily
2016 – “20 years later”, “SKIL” Fund
2017 – “Prose”, “1 dram”, Yerevan bookfest
2018 –“Prose”, Yerevan bookfest
2019- “Poetry”, Yerevan bookfest
