Afternoon Reading with Armen Davoudian

Part of the Creative Writing Visiting Writers Series

Join SMC's Creative Writing Department in Hagerty Lounge for an Afternoon Reading with visiting writer Armen Davoudian, author of The Palace of Forty Pillars. 

Armen Davoudian’s debut poetry collection, The Palace of Forty Pillars, was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Davoudian grew up in Ishafan, Iran and The Palace of Forty Pillars tells of a self estranged from the world around him, as a gay adolescent, an Armenian in Iran, and an immigrant in America. The Armenian genocide, war in the Middle East, the specter of homophobia cast long shadows, as does the distances between mother and son, the power imbalance between lovers, and tense exchanges with the morality police in Iran.

In an interview with the Rumpus, Davoudian said the poetry came from a place of dislocation. “I’d go to bed in our rental apartment in the suburbs of Los Angeles… and I’d wake up disoriented into the body of a ten-year old on a family vacation by the Caspian Sea. Or a few years later, but before we immigrated to the US, it was the sound of a soap opera suddenly crashing into relentless static that I thought I heard, having fallen asleep in front of the TV in my aunt’s house in Tehran, but opening my eyes in my new bed in LA.” 

Visiting Writer events at Saint Mary's are free, open to the public, and ADA Accessible. Visitor parking is available on campus and light refreshments will be served. All attendees are eligible for a fee waiver for the MFA in Creative Writing application—please reach out to Collin Skeen, Assistant Director of Admissions, at cas38@stmarys-ca.edu for more information.