International Armenian Literary Alliance (@armenianliterary.org)

If you love poetry or literary translations, this one’s for you. ✨📚 Catch the full replay of our Literary Lights 2025 event with Dr. Jesse S. Arlen, where he explored his late sister Tenny Arlen’s stunning posthumous poetry collection, To Say With Passion: Who Am I? Watch now: bit.ly/48K6jjA

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Literary Lights 2025: Featuring Tenny Arlen’s To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here? The final installment of our Literary Lights 2025 reading series featured Tenny Arlen’s posthumous poetry collection To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here? Jesse Arlen, co-translator of the book, was joined in conversation by Susan Barba, Hagop Gulludjian and Arthur Ipek. The virtual event took place on December 6, 2025 and was cosponsored by UCLA’s Narekatsi Chair of Armenian Studies, Promise Armenian Institute, Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History and University of Michigan’s Center for Armenian Studies. To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here? is a bilingual (Armenian and English) edition of Tenny Arlen’s poetry, an extraordinary body of work written in a language she began learning only a few years before her passing in 2015. The book brings together the full contents of the 2021 Armenian publication, ԿԻՐՔՈՎ ԸՍԵԼՈՒ՝ ԻՆՉՈ՞Ւ ՀՈՍ ԵՄ, presenting the original poems alongside English translations by Tenny and her brother Jesse Arlen. Literary Lights is an annual reading series organized by the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA), the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center. Each event—held online or in-person—features a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members. https://bit.ly/48K6jjA