About the Author
Micheline Aharonian Marcom is the author of eight books, including a trilogy of books about the Armenian genocide and its aftermath in the 20th century. She has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the US Artists’ Foundation. In 2022, she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Her first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, was a New York Times Notable Book and Runner-Up for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, won the PEN/USA Award for Fiction. In 2008, Marcom taught in Beirut, Lebanon on a Fulbright Fellowship. Marcom is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.
Interviews and Articles
Rain Taxi Review, Winter 20-21
“And it goes without saying that books are not written only for the year they are published, but, if they endure, for the readers who have not even been born, or for their time of translation into another language and culture.”
Micheline recommends 8 Epic Journeys in Literature.
The Orange County Register, 09.2020
“I still hope that people can imagine what it would be like to be sent out from your home and desperately trying to get back when, for reasons that are not of your own doing, you’re forbidden entry…That, I think, is a story that is not only applicable to Americans or Dreamers or undocumented here, but for many people. “
“I think we need provocative art and literature which allows for a deep and complex understanding of the world we live in today, which includes our shared and not always acknowledged stories in history.”
“Writing is akin to how I experience consciousness: it contains its highs and lows—the spiritual and the very mundane—one must, after all, sit in one’s chair and write and revise for years on end, it’s a quiet, unadventurous vocation, and yet the gods do come in…inspiration is also part of the process.”
“I am seeking to make space for the unsaid and the silences of language and history. It's always been my interest to in some ways push against English, get it to “do more." Of course Faulkner is one of my big inspirations, he taught me how syntax can be radical. Wallace Stevens teaches me that too.”
“Eros seems to drive most relationships, and not just those between lovers. Erotic energy is a big powerful force, it shakes things up, causes people to break the rules, makes people do crazy things! Reason doesn’t stand a chance in its face...eros is eternal, like joy.”
“Novels are inquiries, and depending on the subject matter, and on my own evolution as a writer too, I suppose, my interests artistically, have been written accordingly.”
Audio Interviews
Hear Marcom in conversation with David Naimon on Tin House and KBOO’s Between the Covers podcast in March, 2018.
Listen to one of several interviews by Michael Silverblatt on KCRW’s Bookworm.