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Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel, Orhan's Inheritance. Ohanesian was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction and Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. Born in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons.
Aline Ohanesian's website
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Kathy: I was struck when I first read your novel—and in subsequent edits—by how heartfelt it is, and how vivid. Was that richness and honesty the result of your personal connection to the story? Was it influenced by your family's traditions and travels?
Aline: My entire life, the landscape of my grandparents' villages loomed large in my imagination. I'm not sure if other hyphenated Americans are this way, and by that I mean Argentinean-Americans, Mexican-Americans, et cetera, but even three or four generations later, most Armenian-Americans can tell you exactly which villages their grandparents hailed from. So yes, I had an intimate relationship with the land even before I started writing.
As I started writing, I realized that there was a great deal that was familiar to me: the tastes and smells of the cooking, the aesthetics of the landscape, the sound of certain slang words both in Armenian and in Turkish. Of course, I also did a great deal of research. I have a master's degree in History and I spend a good year reading primary and secondary sources, as well as histories of the region and time period.
What was it like to have your great-grandmother tell you her incredible story of exile, ...
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If you enjoyed:
Orhan's Inheritance
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Orhan's Inheritance
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