Meet our
Authors and
Illustrators
Our books are currently in development. You may read about our first round of authors and illustrators here.
Dr. Karenn Chutjian Presti
Dr. Karenn Chutjian Presti is active in the fields of music, language, and education. Her children’s publications have received honors including the Tölölyan Prize for Armenian Literature (Asdghig Wants to Grow Up Quickly), Calouste Gulbenkian project grants, Global Music Awards (My First Armenian Songbook), and family-granted translation rights (William Steig’s Amos & Boris). Karenn has taught Armenian music, piano, and languages at UCLA, USC, and the Munich International School.
Karenn’s first book with Arpi Publishing explores themes of identity and belonging as experienced by two teenagers. Like most fifth-graders, Ara is nervous about the first day of school. Unlike most fifth-graders, he is in the wrong school! He walks to the same school he has attended since kindergarten, but the campus is now home to a Japanese-immersion school. Ara is desperate to return to his old school, an Armenian elementary, but his parents’ recent divorce and the old school’s new location make that impossible. Along with his old classmate, Asdghig, Ara tries to make the best of an absurd situation where he cannot understand a word the teacher utters. In such a foreign environment, how can he and Asdghig ever find a sense of belonging?
Ishkhan Jinbashian is the author of the novel Arkhiv Hasnumi and the short-story collection Tserki Khagh.
He is also a literary translator, with over 25 books to his credit. Ishkhan’s first book with Arpi Publishing will be a novel for young adults. It will tell the story of a 17-year-old Angeleno who can’t wait to leave the confines of his community to experience the world — and maybe even to help change it.
Dr. Tamar M. Boyadjian
Dr. Tamar M. Boyadjian is an author, poet, editor, and translator. She teaches and writes about the premodern Mediterranean world; questions around the writing, preservation, and translation of endangered languages—primarily Western Armenian; and the role of women writers in Armenian literary history. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies.
Tamar’s first book with Arpi Publishing will be the first of a fantasy series set in a mythical world of seven ruling kingdoms, where, after taking a wounded soldier to the Lusignan castle, an orphan girl and her brother accept the challenge of obtaining an object of power guarded by a dragon.
Avedis Hadjian
Born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1968. Writer and journalist. He has worked as an Editorial Writer for La Prensa newspaper in Buenos Aires. He later moved to the United States, where he worked for CNN, Bloomberg News, and The Wall Street Journal. He has published in Los Angeles Times, International Business Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Hyperallergic, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has studied journalism in Buenos Aires. He is also a graduate of Cambridge University with a degree in International Relations. His book on the Armenians who still live in the geography of the Genocide in occupied Western Armenia and Cilicia, Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey, was published in April 2018 (I.B. Tauris – Bloomsbury, London and New York). He lives in Venice.
Avedis’s first book with Arpi Publishing is a novel about three prisoners who emerge from a medieval galley at the Arsenale, the historic shipyard of Venice in 2015. The incomprehensible language they speak and a mysterious letter they carry from the Catholicos for the Pope puzzle authorities and experts. Fr. Khachatour, a monk from the Armenian monastery of St. Lazarus, is called upon to help solve the riddle.
Lerna Selekman Karakutuk
Lerna Selekman Karakutuk graduated from Istanbul University’s Latin Language and Literature Department and holds a Master’s degree in Educational Sciences from Yildiz Technical University. She has written poetry, short stories, and fairy tales, co-authored a textbook and a book of anecdotes for children, and contributed to various fairy-tale collections. Lerna’s poetry includes the volumes Yertas Parov, An E vor Ga, and Tsayner. She has also written the children’s books Tbrotsi Jampun Vra and Shushanigu yev Bochigu. Currently she teaches at the Dadian School, in Istanbul.
Lerna’s first book with Arpi Publishing is a novel about Sandra, a young woman who must navigate life in a big city. Sandra realizes soon enough that she can never become independent without a good education, and accordingly takes steps toward the goal of cultivating her mind. While her path is filled with hurdles and struggles, particularly in terms of family dynamics, Sandra always maintains a levelheaded approach with regard to relationships; and treats her friends, as well as the problems facing her, with utmost integrity, striving to make the right decisions.
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