Shushan Avagyan

Shushan Avagyan (b. 1976) is a writer, literary translator, scholar, editor and educator. She’s the author of Girk-Anvernagir (Book, Untitled, 2006), Zarubyani Kanayk (Zarubyan’s Women, 2014) and co-author, with the Queering Yerevan collective, of Queered: What’s To Be Done with X-Centric Art (2011), as well as of one children’s book Sabriky gnum e tangaran (Sabrik is going to a museum, 2021). She has translated several books into English from Armenian and Russian, including a volume of Shushanik Kurghinian’s poetry (from Armenian) entitled I Want To Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian  (AIWA), several books of Viktor Shklovsky - Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot, Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar  (which brought her an honorable mention of Scaglione Prize, 2011), A Hunt for Optimism, and The Hamburg Score (all published by Dalkey Archive Press) -, Art and Production by Boris Arvatov (Pluto Press). Her writings, interviews, and translations have appeared in  the Review of Contemporary Fiction,  Contemporary Women’s Writing, The Book of Saint Ejneb, Asymptote, Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism, Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, etc. 

Dr. Avagyan received her PhD in English Studies from Illinois State University with a specialization in Translation Studies (dissertation - Traumatic Indifelities; Translation the Literature of the Armenian Genocide) and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies.  She has taught comparative literature courses and translation workshops since 2006. Currently she holds several positions in American University of Armenia; Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), Coordinator of the graduate Certificate in Translation (СTRA) program; Director of AUA Press. 

Shushan Avagyan is the chair of PEN Armenia’s Translation& Linguistic Rights Committee (since 2021).

how else should one react to being born a woman, if not by abducting the future