NORA NADJARIAN: November 2009

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Ending The Week On A High: BLUE PEAR

I just found out that my story "Blue Pear" is being featured in "Best Of Metazen"... I'm thrilled that Frank Hinton, editor of Metazen, thought it worthy of this honour. I really like Metazen. It's well-presented, quite innovative and that little bit "different" to other e-zines I've appeared in. Thank you, Frank!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Highs and Lows

It has been a strange couple of days - my morale has hit an all time low due to an unexpected "something" of a personal nature. I'm still wondering how it could have happened. And why. Reality certainly can be stranger than fiction.
When something like this happens, I always think "It can't get any worse, so it must get better."
And it did.
The wonderful and talented Tania Hershman is featuring me as a guest writer on her excellent and highly informative blog. You can read it here http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/2009/11/writing-and-place-guest-blog-post-4-by.html

Another high today. Folded Word and its wonderful editor Jessi Graustein run a monthly feature on the blog called "TEN with..." It's a Question/Answer article that features a recent contributor. And I'm being asked the ten questions this month! I am thrilled about that. Thank you Jessi!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Divided We Write

30 November 2009, Lecture, Goethe-Zentrum Nicosia, 20.00 h

"Divided we write. German and Cypriot authors on their divided homelands"

Lecturer: Dr Holger Briel, Associate Professor, University of Nicosia

In 2008, Uwe Tellkamp took the German bestseller lists by storm with his 1000-page text "Der Turm" in which he describes the turmoil of intellectuals living in the former German Democratic Republic. Nora Nadjarian's texts, especially her very well received "Ledra Street" (2006) are poetically charting the results of living in another divided country, Cyprus.

Why Betty Boop?

Why Betty Boop? Because when I was a kid I was told by almost everyone who met me that I had BIG eyes. I still have big eyes.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Hello Blogging Universe

I have decided to be a part of the great big blogging universe.

Biography

Nora Nadjarian is an award-winning Cypriot poet and writer. She has represented Cyprus at literary events and festivals in Europe and elsewhere, including Frankfurt Book Fair and Dresdner Bardinale and within the framework of EU2016, in the poetry project ‘In European Poetry I want to live’ (Amsterdam).

Her work has been cited or published in the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Telegraph and has also won prizes and commendations in international competitions, including the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, the Féile Filíochta International Poetry Competition, the Binnacle International Ultra-Short Competition and the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. Her work deals with the themes of women, refugees, identity, exile, love and loss, as well as the political situation in Cyprus.

In Cyprus she is best known for her book of short stories “Ledra Street” (2006) but has had poetry and short fiction published internationally. Her work was included in A River of Stories, an anthology of tales and poems from across the Commonwealth, illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski, Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey Archive Press), Being Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) and Capitals (Bloomsbury, 2017).Her latest publication is the collection of short stories Selfie (Roman Books, 2017) and her short plays “Mermaid” and “Catalina” were recently performed at the Old Red Lion theatre in London.

Her special interest lies in the teaching of creative writing. In recent years she has facilitated several creative writing workshops– in English, Greek and German – at schools, universities and prisons in Cyprus and Germany.