Dawn Anahid MacKeen Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Dawn Anahid MacKeen shares how the Armenian genocide shaped her family and why it matters that Turkey still denies this dark history - a topic she explores in The Hundred-Year Walk, a biography of her grandfather's courage in the face of terrible odds.

Why did you feel compelled to write this book?

Ever since I can remember, my mother has been telling me about what happened to her father. Still, the story was relayed in fragments, and I couldn't grasp how extraordinary it was until I could finally read it for myself as an adult. (This was thanks to a relative who translated his account, which was published in the sixties by a small press, from Armenian into English.) After reading it, I couldn't believe that he survived, and the ripple effect that my entire family was alive. My grandfather Stepan believed he lived in order to tell the world what happened, and shared his ordeal with my mother throughout her childhood. She then passed it onto me. This is our family's heirloom. Other people inherit fine china. I inherited this story, along with it the responsibility of retelling it.

Would you have survived this?

I ask myself this all the time. At each turn, what would I have done when faced with the same near-impossible odds? Would I have made the same decisions as my grandfather? Or would I have given up? My grandfather did everything to reunite with his family again, transforming himself constantly, and pushing his own physical and emotional limits. He ...