Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Micheline Aharonian Marcom (born 1968) is an American novelist.

Life and work

Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1968 to an American father and an Armenian-Lebanese mother. She grew up in Los Angeles, but as a child in the years before the Lebanese Civil War, she spent summers in Beirut with her mother's family.

Her first book and the beginning of a trilogy of novels, Three Apples Fell from Heaven (2001), is set in Turkey between 1915–1917 and depicts the Ottoman government's genocide of the Armenian population. It was named as one of the best books of the year by both The Washington Post^[1] and the Los Angeles Times.^[2] Her second book in the trilogy, The Daydreaming Boy (2004), which earned her the 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship as well as the 2005 PEN/USA Award for Fiction, is centered on a middle-aged survivor of the genocide living in a 1960s Beirut which itself is facing collapse. The culmination of the trilogy, Draining the Sea (2008), is a fierce critique of America's complicit involvement in the Guatemalan Civil War.

Marcom’s fourth novel—whose original title “The Edge of Love" was a reference to Clarice Lispector's story That’s Where I’m Going—was published by Dalkey Archive Press as The Mirror in the Well (2008).

Her fifth book, A Brief History of Yes, was published in June 2013 by Dalkey Archive Press.

In 2008, Marcom taught at Haigazian University in Beirut on a Fulbright Fellowship. She currently teaches Creative Writing at Mills College and is also on the faculty of the Goddard College MFA in Creative Writing Program. She lives in California.

Awards

• 2012 United States Artists Fellow award ^[3]
• 2006 Whiting Award^[4][5]
• 2005 PEN/USA Award for Fiction^[6]
• 2004 Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship^[7]

Publications

• The Myth of Genocide. Mills College. 1999. Master's Thesis.
• Three Apples Fell from Heaven. Riverhead Books. 2001. ISBN 978-1-57322-915-9.
• The Daydreaming Boy. Riverhead Books. 2004. ISBN 978-1-59448-075-1.
• Draining the Sea. Riverhead Books. 2008. ISBN 978-1-59448-973-0.
• The Mirror in the Well. Dalkey Archive Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1-56478-511-4.
• A Brief History of Yes. Dalkey Archive Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-56478-849-8

References

1. "A look back at the titles of 2001 that won the greatest praise from our reviewers -- in their own words.". The Washington Post. 2 December 2001.
2. "The Best Books of 2001". Los Angeles Times. 2 December 2001. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
3. United States Artists Official Website
4. Benson, Heidi. "Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Saudi - Media (3 of 5) Bay Area writers crowd dais / Whiting". The San Francisco Chronicle.
5. "Two Mills Professors Win Prestigious Whiting Writers' Prizes". Mills College. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
6. "Mills Professor/Alumna Micheline Aharonian Marcom Wins 2005 PEN/USA Award For Fiction". Mills College. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
7. "Micheline Aharonian Marcom". Lannan Foundation. Retrieved 7 May 2015.

External links

• Author's website
• Interview, KCRW
• "Interview with Micheline Aharonian Marcom," Shushan Avagyan, Context N°22, Dalkey Archive Press, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• "(Un)Disciplining Traumatic Memory: Mission Orphanages and the Afterlife of Genocide in Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s The Daydreaming Boy," Rebecca Saunders and Shushan Avagyan, Contemporary Women's Writing 2010, Oxford Journals
• Music & Literature Magazine, Issue 1/Fall 2012, Section 3: On Micheline Aharonian Marcom