Join the International Armenian Literary Alliance for the fourth installment of Literary Lights 2026 featuring Naira Kuzmich’s posthumous debut novel Fearcatcher. Vedran Husić, author and Kuzmich’s former partner, will be joined by writers and editors Aram Mrjoian and Chelsey Kimberly Shannon. The virtual event, cosponsored by the University of New Orleans Press, will take place on June 14, 2026, at 10:00 AM Pacific | 1:00 PM Eastern | 9:00 PM Armenia time.
In a remote Soviet Armenian village, baby Ruzan is found abandoned and taken in by the local fearcatcher—a woman both revered and feared. Raised in this mystical trade, Ruzan longs to escape the village’s insularity and the destiny her mother insists she can’t outrun. When she moves to Yerevan on the brink of revolution, she finally begins building a life of her own. But danger pulls her back, forcing her to face who she is and who she might become. Fearcatcher is a lush, intimate novel that blends folklore and fate into a spellbinding coming-of-age story.
About the Authors:
Naira Kuzmich was born in Armenia and raised in the Los Angeles enclave of Little Armenia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in West Branch, Blackbird, Ecotone, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the short story collection In Everything I See Your Hand. She passed away in 2017 from lung cancer.
Vedran Husić was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and raised in Germany and the United States. His debut short story collection, Basements and Other Museums (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), was a semifinalist for the 2019 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He is the recipient of two fiction fellowships from Provincetown’s Fine Arts Works Center and a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His short stories and poems have been published in places such as North American Review, Image, Blackbird, Ecotone, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, among others. Excerpts from his recently completed memoir, For Those Truly Living—which deals with his fiancée Naira Kuzmich’s struggle with cancer, their life before and during her illness, and a year of his life following her death—have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and AGNI. He currently teaches at Saint Leo University, where he is on faculty for the low-residency MA in Creative Writing program, and lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife, the writer Anne Barngrover.
Aram Mrjoian is a writer, editor, critic, and educator. He teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan, where he serves as the managing editor of Michigan Quarterly Review, and on the MFA faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop. Aram has previously worked as an editor at The Rumpus, the Chicago Review of Books, the Southeast Review, and TriQuarterly. He is also the editor of the anthology We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Runner’s World, Literary Hub, Catapult, West Branch, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Boulevard, Joyland, Longreads, and many other publications. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Northwestern University and a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University. He lives in Michigan. His debut novel, Waterline, is out now with HarperVia (June 2025).
Chelsey Kimberly Shannon is a writer and an editor at the University of New Orleans Press. She holds an M.F.A. from the UNO Creative Writing Workshop. As a teenager, she published the memoir Chelsey: My True Story of Murder, Loss, and Starting Over. Other publications can be found here. Scorpio moon, Cancer rising, Aquarius sun, Chelsey is committed to interrogating and creating from her position as a biracial Black queer femme. She’s prone to obsession and lives in New Orleans with her family.
Literary Lights 2026 is IALA's fourth annual reading series showcasing new works of literature by Armenian authors, cohosted with the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center. Each event—held online or in-person—will feature a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members. Read along with the series by purchasing Fearcatcher and more titles at IALA's Bookshop.org storefront.