Late fall update
This writing update comes to you slightly late, but contains news of books, upcoming events, and possible plans to move near you.
I’m excited and proud to be involved with the publication of Queered: What’s To Be Done With Xcentric Art, a book which documents the activities of Queering Yerevan (formerly WOW) for the past four years, including art and correspondence among a constantly shifting collective of queer-identified Armenian women activists, artists and writers. Read a great review here: http://www.ianyanmag.com/2011/
This summer, I completed five chapters of the first draft of “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”, a nonfiction novel which tells the stories of a personal relationship with a much younger Armenian man while offering social and political critique of corruption, conformism and social change in the U.S. and Armenia. Composed of blog posts and journal entries between Yerevan and Queens, the book explores what freedom means in an unconventional marriage scrutinized by conservative relatives, baffled friends, and the Department of Homeland Security. Hear an excerpt from the new second draft at the Boundless Tales Reading Series, 7:30 pm on December 15 at Waltz-Astoria, 23-14 Ditmars Blvd in Astoria.
Though I’ve been inspired by the Occupy movement here in New York, I’m considering a move to pursue more in-depth work on “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”. I’ve been conducting a nationwide (and overseas) academic job search to find a stable teaching position that will grant more time for writing. Plan B could be teaching English abroad, doing more freelance and editing work and less adjunct teaching here in NYC, and/or cutting down on expenses by living in a tiny house. An article I wrote for Getaway Style inspired the latter option: http://www.getawaystyle.com/
I continued my work with writing on ethnicity, nationality, race, class, sexuality and gender in a topic-based English composition course on Cultural Identity which I designed for students at Queens College; several other professors have been using my course design as a resource for their sections. It’s been enlightening to explore with my students issues of weighing pride against discrimination, and openness against insularity, which I detailed on a personal level in my memoir Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (available through aunt lute books).
As always, thank you for your support. Sending you good energy for peaceful change during this Occupy Fall.
Nancy
Summer 2011
Writing in Vermont, July 2011
After a week writing on a placid farm in Vermont, staying with my dear old friend from college Sarah Green, I’m off to San Antonio for Macondo, the annual workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros for writers of social justice. If you (or any friends) are in the vicinity, I’ll be doing a reading with other Macondistas. As soon as I return I’ll be on Governor’s Island for the First Annual NYC Poetry Festival, a cavalcade of poetry under the sun. Details for both are below.
Macondo Workshop Reading
Our Lady of the Lake University
San Antonio, TX
Thiry Auditorium
Thursday, July 28th
7 pm
Music: Conjunto El Trio
Free
http://www.macondofoundation.org/programs_workshop_events.html
New York Poetry Festival
Governor’s Island, NYC
Sunday, July 31st
1 pm
Stage 2 – The Brigadier
with Lola Koundakjian and Alan Semerdjian
representing the Armenian Poetry Project/Gartal
Free
Ferries from Manhattan in the Battery, and from Brooklyn and Queens via the new East River Ferry
Spring good news
Here are a few events and activities that I am very proud and excited to share with you:
I will be singing the punk-folk song “Victim” (which I composed with Ann Perich during our Guitar Boy days), and reading an essay about the time I performed it in Yerevan for a day long symposium, “Second Thoughts on the Memory Industry” at the New York Institute for the Humanities: http://nyihumanities.org/event/second-thoughts-on-the-memory-industry-a-symposium
I will be performing during a segment with Eric Bogosian on the Armenian genocide. I’m very honored to be sharing a stage with him, as well as with the other participants, like Art Spiegelman, Francine Prose, and Philip Gourevitch, who will be questioning the reconciliation and memorialization of genocide and holocaust.
Sunday, May 7
6:30 pm
Cantor Film Center
36 E. 8th Street
Free
Also, I’m happy to announce that I have been accepted into the Macondo Writer’s Workshop in San Antonio, TX, founded by Sandra Cisneros. This is a week-long residency for writers working with issues of social justice. It’s also a wider network of writers who have participated previously in the workshop. I’m excited to join this community for the first time, to share my work about Armenia with them, and to meet and learn from others. http://www.macondofoundation.org/home.html
Finally, the collective Queering Yerevan is moving forward with our book project, “Two Years in Correspondence” which will be ready this summer. This project has been two years in the making and will include correspondence, art and interviews from the women artists and activists of QY, from various countries and differing sensibilities, as we formed as a collective and joined forces to produce groundbreaking art events in Yerevan. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aglany/two-years-in-correspondence-from-the-wow-collect/posts
I wanted to let you know about these kinds of unique activities, at a time when arts and education are under attack; here are heartening examples that there are organizations and creative leaders continuing to forge ahead.
I am grateful for your encouragement and support, and send you good wishes for inspiration, collective power, and peace.
February Events
Following up on my last post, here are some photos of my performance in Milan: http://nancyagabian.com/?page_id=50 (You have to scroll down a little to see the series.)
Also, I’ll be presenting my work at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in Washington DC. Saturday, February 5, 1:30 pm:
| Thurgood Marshall North Room Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level |
S175. Kin: Mixed-Genre of Color. (Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Linda Hogan, Deborah A. Miranda, Ching-In Chen, Nancy Agabian, vaimoana litia makakaufaki niumeitolu) Artistic traditions of color precede, intersect with, and inform European forms, but too often are ignored in discussions of the avant-garde. This is especially unfortunate when we see the long traditions and volume of work being produced that buck against, exist outside of, and hybridize Eurocentric conventions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and theater. Europeans are not the only innovators, and what mixed-genre writers of color produce is both highly crafted and highly traditional. |
and I’ll be reading new work in Queens on Wednesday, February 9, 7 pm
as part of the new Coffee and Commas series
in a program titled ”It Could Have Been” (a different take on the Valentine’s theme)
with Alia Akkam, Rena Bonne, Dennis Borowsky, Audrey Dimola, Beatriz Gil, Robert Trabold, KC Trommer
at Cafe Marlene
41-11 49th Street
(between Skillman and 43th Ave)
Sunnyside, NY 11104
I’m really happy to be part of these communities of writers. If you’re in the vicinity, I would love to welcome you into the discussion…
Nancy
New Year News
Dear friends,
I am writing from snowbound NYC to let you know I will be performing in Milan as part of the Fclassmate Series at Jerome Zodo Gallery, via Lambro 7, 7:31 pm on January 10, 2011. If you know anyone in that neck of the Italian woods, please send them my way.
“Family Returning Blows” is a solo performance about domestic violence which combines personal narratives, news reports, Facebook images and Armenian idioms to explore the power dynamics among genders and within the world order. Taking place between New York City and Yerevan, between the private and the public, between male and female, a story simultaneously evolves and destructs. Writer/performer Nancy Agabian creates an insular world with movement, voice, projected images, and homemade props to investigate intimacy — sexual, technological, and familial — and finds meaning in tinderboxes of violence, from the upstairs neighbors to presidential policies.
Stay well and creative.
Nancy
Fall happenings
I got back from Armenia only ten days ago. It was an amazing trip, with a highlight being my “Physical Translating” writing workshop reading at the “Queering Translation” art intervention on August 1. The women involved were incredible: engaged, creative, and generous with each other. They were all interested in the topic of writing about and through the body, but were all ages and from all walks of life. More details on the workshops can be found on the Queering Yerevan blog, here, here and here.
photo courtesty Anahit Hayrapetyan
Upcoming news: I’m excited to be reading with another Armenian women writer, Cathy Salbian,
740 University Avenue
in Rochester, New York
September 9, 7 pm
This is very cool as I just met Cathy last year at the UCLA Armenian Writer’s Conference, and we hit it off, writing on similar themes. I particularly loved her nonfiction about a spiritual ritual: funny, touching, yet also self-aware and questioning. She’s been exploring her family history in Western Armenia, and has also visited Armenia, so we have a lot in common and many stories and ideas to share.
I will also be doing a Gartal/Armenian Poetry Project “On the Road” event in Providence!
Reading with Lola Koundakjian and Michael Akillian
259 Atwells Avenue
Providence, RI
on October 28 , 6 pm
This was Lola’s idea, and is also very cool: bringing a local community event (Gartal and APP) to other cities and inviting local writers to join us. We’ll be contributing visual materials related to our written work for the gallery’s public art window, too. The reading will be part of Gallery Z’s “art food wine” monthly series.
In the winter, I am looking forward to a possible performance in Italy (fingers crossed) and contributing to the “Kin: Mixed Genre of Color” panel at AWP in February in Washington DC. So check back for more details.
Nancy
Summer 2010
1. My memoir Me as her again has been shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing:
http://library.stanford.edu/saroyan/shortlistsrelease2010.html
2. My personal essay about reviving my 90s-era, L.A.-based performance art/folk/punk band Guitar Boy to perform at the wonderful Wonder Cabinet at Occidental College appears on the happening art blog Hyperallergic.
3. I will be in Yerevan, Armenia for the month of July to teach a brief workshop on body-based writing:
“Physical Translating”
A creative writing workshop
“Physical Translating” is a body-based creative writing workshop for women. It will take place in conjunction with the WOW (Women-Oriented Women) Collective’s 3rd annual art intervention July 31-August 1, this year on Translation, at the Women’s Resource Center in Yerevan. In three Saturday morning three-hour sessions, workshop participants will collaborate to write prose (fiction and/or nonfiction, in English, Armenian, and/or other languages) about physical experiences — in illness, disconnection, pain, joy, experimentation, athleticism, sexuality, reproduction and otherwise.To stimulate discussion and prompt writing exercises, we will read short texts (in English and Armenian) by a range of contemporary multicultural women writers (possibly including Margaret Atwood, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Audre Lorde, Staceyann Chin), including Armenian writers (mostly selected from the anthologies Deviation, Matnashoonch and Der Hovanessian’s The Other Voice). Creative movement/performance exercises will also be incorporated to inspire writing. The series will culminate in a reading of new work during WOW’s weekend art intervention. A special section of the WRCA’s journal Feminist will feature work from “Physical Translating.”
Mid Spring 2010 Catch Up
I’m a little late with all this news, but Spring always seems to derail me. So, most of these tidbits are coming after the fact.
In March, I wrote about my experience performing at the Whitney Bienniale on Hyperallergic, a NYC-based art blog.
On April 2, Gartal co-hosted a reading with the Armenian Poetry Project at the Bowery Poetry Club, which included the Zephyr Poets from L.A. (Tina Demerdjian, Armine Iknadossian, Shahe Mankerian and Alene Terzian), Lola Koundakjian, Amir Parsa, Alan Semerdjian and me. It was super! Texts and recordings from the event, including one of my poems, can be found at the Armenian Poetry Project website.
My band Guitar Boy played at the Wondercabinet at Occidental College on April 24. Here is a nice photo. And a link to Guitar Boy’s My Space page.
And some info on the Wondercabinet, a mind-boggling, curiosity-inspiring, day-long event exploring modern convergences of art and science:
 |
On Saturday, April 24, Occidental College will return to the days before science and the arts separated into mutually exclusive domains as writer, critic and intellectual impresario Lawrence Weschler brings his day-long “Wonder Cabinet” to Eagle Rock.
“Intellectually, one of the things I’ve long been interested in is the notion of returning to a time when the sciences were at the heart of the humanities, when there was a marvelous, polymorphous, promiscuous interaction between scientists, artists, wizards and inventors,” says Weschler, a long-time New Yorker staff writer and author of the Pulitzer-nominated Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders who today is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. “The division between arts and sciences is only 300 years old at most. Before that, people like Michelangelo and Leonardo were as much scientists as artists. There was no distinction between the different interests they were pursuing.”
“In fact, with the rise of the Internet and social media we may be returning to an era in which scientists and artists, historians and digital innovators have all kinds of things to say to each other,” he says. “The Wonder Cabinet aims to facilitate that conversation. But it’s also simply a celebration of all things cool.”
Featuring the art films of Jessica Yu, Ed Ruscha, the Center for Land Use Interpretation Boris Hars-Tschachotin; Photographer Lena Herzog; Famed historian, magus, and sleight-of-hand master Ricky Jay; David Wilson, the MacArthur-winning founder of the Museum of Jurassic Technology; Oscar-winning film and sound editor Walter Murch; Cal Tech physicist Ken Libbrecht; Michigan artist Matt Shlian; New York artist Lauren Redniss; Identical twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes
Other news: I’m preparing to travel to Yerevan, Armenia, during the month of July to offer a creative writing workshop to women and participate in the WOW Collective’s annual intervention.
I’m gearing up to offer another community writing workshop in Queens, October-December 2010, more details coming soon…
Till Summer…
March 2010
My essay “Waiting for Tables”, about Turkish and Armenian neighbors in Sunnyside, Queens, is in the March 2010 issue of the Brooklyn Rail. Here is the link to read it online: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2010/03/local/waiting-for-tables
As always, Me as her again, my memoir exploring Armenian and queer women’s identity, can be purchased online in many of the usual places, but support Aunt Lute Books, the independent press who published it and many other amazing books by women, by purchasing it directly from them: http://auntlute.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?
Upcoming reading
The Greek-American Writers’ Association and
Gartal, an Armenian Literary Reading Series
present
Nancy Agabian
Nicholas Samaras
Mehmet Uca
Saturday December 19
6-8 pm
Cornelia Street Cafe
between W 4th and Bleecker
West of 6th Ave in Greenwich Village
Subway: ACEBDFV to W 4th St
212 989-9319 for reservations and info
$7 cover includes a drink
