Nancy Kricorian

Nancy Jean Kricorian (Armenian: Նենսի Կրիկորյան) is an American author of the novels Zabelle (1997) and Dreams of Bread and Fire (2003). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published her third novel "All the Light There Was" in March 2013.

Kricorian was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, the daughter of Irene (Gelinas), a child care provider, and Edward L. Kricorian, a meatcutter. She is of Armenian (father) and French-Canadian (mother) descent. Kricorian, a graduate of Dartmouth College, has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. She is an award-winning and widely published poet who has taught at Yale, Queens College, Rutgers, and Columbia. She is a former member of the editorial board of Ararat Quarterly, the advisory board of the Armenia Tree Project, and is a NAASR member.

Her work was part of the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books for which she wrote a piece based upon Ecclesiastes, a book of the King James Bible

She was the coordinator of CODEPINK New York City from 2003-2010, and is currently on the national staff of CODEPINK Women for Peace. She was the Fall 2015 Writer-in-Residence at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, and a fellow of Women Mobilizing Memory project at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference. Kricorian is married to producer and screenwriter James Schamus.

• Women Mobilizing Memory Fellow at The Center for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University (2013-2017)
• PEN American Center (2003)
• ARARAT Literary Quarterly Editorial Board (1998-2004)
• Armenia Tree Project Executive Committee (2001-2016)
• CODEPINK Women for Peace (2003-2016)
• Board of the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (2016)

• Writer in Residence, Kevorkian Center for Near East Studies, New York University, Fall
• 2015
• Gold Medal of the Writers Union of Armenia, 2007
• Anahid Literary Award, The Armenian Center at Columbia University, 1998
• ARARAT Short Story Prize, 1997
• Daniel Varoujan Prize, New England Poetry Club, 1995
• Residency, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., January 1991
• Educational Press Award, Editorial Category, 1991
• Judith's Room Emerging Talent Prize, 1990
• RIVER STYX Poetry Prize, 1990
• Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts, l988
• Tuition Scholarship, School of Criticism and Theory, l988
• Academy of American Poets Prize, Columbia, l987
• Residency, Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France, Summer l986
• Finalist, Benjamin Burns Poetry Contest, Columbia, l985
• Graduate Writing Fellowship, Columbia, l985
• Claire Woolrich Scholarship, Columbia, l984
• Dartmouth Graduate Fellowship to the University of Paris, l983-l984
• Phi Beta Kappa, Dartmouth, l982
• Senior Fellowship, Creative Writing, Dartmouth, l98l
• The Alexander Laing Poetry Prize, Dartmouth, l980 and l98l

Fiction

• ALL THE LIGHT THERE WAS, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (hardcover) March 2013; She Writes Press (paperback) October 2014
• DREAMS OF BREAD AND FIRE, Grove Press (hardcover), May 2003,
• (paperback) April 2004
• DREAMS OF BREAD AND FIRE foreign editions: Aras (Turkey, Nov. 2017);
• Editions Thaddée (France, forthcoming)
• “The Tin Cup,” excerpt from ZABELLE, Salamander Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1999
• ZABELLE, novel, Atlantic Monthly Press (hardcover), January 1998 and Bard/Avon
• (paperback), March 1999 (later a HarperPerennial title); paperback reissued by
• Grove, September 2009.
• ZABELLE foreign editions: Machborot (Israel, Nov. 98), Piper (Germany, Aug. 98), Gyldendal (Denmark, June 98), Vassallucci (The Netherlands, April 98), Writers Union of Armenia (Armenia, Dec. 07), Belge (Turkey, Feb. 08)
• "The Balcony," short story, ARARAT, Fall 1997
• "Armenian Eyes," short story, ARARAT, Spring 1991