Sunday Best Reading Series, March 6, 2011

A Benefit for NoMAA (the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance)

Sunday, March 6th at 4:00 p.m. 

Readings by literary artists who have received Individual Artist Grants from NoMAA for 2011

Christine Toy Johnson

Lola Koundakjian

Danielle Lazarin

Will MacAdams

Suggested donation of $7 includes free drinks and snacks

Reception after to meet the composers and writers

Sunday Best Reading Series
Performances by fiction writers, poets, dramatists, memoir writers and spoken-word composers
The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens
Pinehurst Avenue and 183rd Street

NoMAA’s mission is to cultivate, support and promote the works of artists and arts organizations in Northern Manhattan. Their programs and services include the Regrant Program, Technical Assistance Institute, Uptown Arts Stroll, NoMAA Gallery and Artists’ Salon. More atwww.nomaanyc.org.

Christine Toy Johnson is an award-winning playwright, actor and filmmaker whose plays have been developed at such places as the Roundabout Theatre and Crossroads Theatre. The Christine Toy Johnson Portfolio, an anthology of her work, is included in the Library of Congress Asian Pacific American Performing Arts Collection. www.christinetoyjohnson.com

Lola Koundakjian serves on the editorial board of Ararat, an Armenian-American Literary Quarterly. Her poetry has appeared on the web and in print in the US, Canada, Armenia and Lebanon. For the past 20 years, Lola has organized evenings dedicated to the Dead Armenian Poets’ Society and since 2006 has produced and edited text and audio for the

Armenian Poetry Project. She has read in venues in NY, RI and LA, and her work was translated into Spanish for the 20th International Poetry Festival in Medellin, Colombia, where she read in July 2010. http://Armenian-poetry.blogspot.com

Danielle Lazarin’s fiction has appeared on FiveChapters.com, in Boston Review and Michigan Quarterly Review. A graduate of Oberlin College's creative writing program, she has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan. She recently moved back to her native New York, where she is at work on her first novel.

Will MacAdams creates original plays inspired by local stories. Recently, he worked with farmers, farm workers, dancers, and other residents of Warwick, NY to create Water and Stone, a performance poem about land and community change. Past projects include Eye to Eye, an original play about racism and youth-police relations, created with future police officers and young people from New Haven, CT; and Cruising the Divide, an interview-inspired play about race, class, and the celebration of the Kentucky Derby. He is a past recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership Fellowship. He teaches theater in City College's Center for Worker Education.

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http://sundaybestreadingseries.wordpress.com/

Sunday Best Curator, Patrizia Eakins, 212-923-7800 x1342

Also Coming Soon to The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens:

April 3rd at 4:00: High Jinks!: Musico-Literary satirists Mikhail Horowitz and Gilles Malkine. Also appearing: Duo Fortuna--Charles Ramsey and Leslie Upchurch. $7. 

The Accidental Observer is now available for sale

Lola Koundakjian's first poetry collection is now available for purchase. 


Praise for The Accidental Observer


The poetry reading community owes a huge debt of gratitude to Lola Koundakjian for her years of service to the art, making the work of Armenian poets, writers of Armenian ancestry in many languages, available to readers world-wide with her Armenian Poetry Project. Now, we meet Lola herself in three languages…and it’s about time!
— Diana Der-Hovanessian




Lola Koundakjian's first collection reveals a curious and prescient mind roaming the landscapes of our collective illusions – and disillusionments. Through her spare style and a measured economy of language, she manages to decipher the banality of the everyday on one page, and, on the next, dissect the anatomy of suffering. Insightful and poignant, this is the work of a meticulous observer, and an acutely aware consciousness.
— Amir Parsa




These poems of longing and grace are the kind we pass from friend to friend. How wonderful to find them in three languages, each proclaiming their own bright joy.
— William Michaelian




These poems tread lightly but so perceptively. In delicate language and in three tongues, the poet takes us on a winding journey, a walk through “the dew intertwined with mist” on the path leading to and from love, to and from a lover who is now there, now absent. This theme is played out sensitively against backdrops of New York, with echos of the Middle East and Armenia sounding sotto voce. A vignette of a garden on West 87th street with a mulberry tree and “crushed ripe mulberries” evokes loss, love and childhood. From this miniature of New York, Koundakjian shows us far places freshly — Firenze and Toscana, afternoon coffee in Spain and an evocation of Morocco. The Armenian and English texts are transpositions of her perceptions into the different cultures, each rewarding in its own modality and in the meaning to be found in the place between them.
— Michael E. Stone




“y desapareces/ dejándome recuerdos/ bocados apenas” así inicia Lola Koundakjian su potencia evocadora. Así, dando nombres a los gestos íntimos de un pasado que se le hace pedazos en la memoria. Así, sus poemas, como un libro de viajes, recorren las sensaciones en imágenes que agregan futuro a lo ya sucedido. Olores, sabores y miradas que conforman memoriales cuyo objetivo es transformar el espacio de escritura en espacio conmemorativo. La densidad de Koundakjian reside en ofrecer ternura a la resistencia, en acordar una cita agradecida con sus raíces produciendo su propia perpetuación. El rito de la palabra hace justicia, nombra el destino del poema junto a su lector; su calidad de testigo.
— Ana Arzoumanian


Lola Koundakjian continues to open doors with her passion for poetry. These spare but heartfelt pieces have several faces and textures because of the work she has done with their translations. An ambitious project that only a poetry advocate such as Lola can deliver.
— Armine Iknadossian




Lola Koundakjian goes after real moments, and she does so quickly, concisely, masterfully--as if she is in panic of losing that rare afternoon light or the playful shadows cast over Central Park by the accidental cumulus clouds. She's like those rare poet-photographers that must work swiftly if they want to capture the moment just right.
— Shahé Mankerian


“It is hard to find a better advocate for poetry across
culture and time than Lola Koundakjian, and this
collection is good hard evidence.”
— Alan Semerdjian


“A trilingual volume of nostalgic reflections on the
four seasons, filled with exotic aromas and flavours,
drawing from the East and West, from Armenia and New
York, from beyond and within, and in search of our
common destiny.”
— Alan Whitehorn