MARBLEHEAD – The Abbot Public Library, in Marblehead, is delighted to host a reading by world-renowned poet David Kherdian, on Tuesday, April 12th, at 7:00 pm. The reading will be in two segments: biographical childhood poems, and a general selection from the body of Kherdian’s work, which includes twenty-three published collections of poetry. The reading will end with an opportunity for questions from the audience. A selection of books by Kherdian also will be available for sale and signing.
David Kherdian was born in Racine, Wisconsin. Root River Return, his memoir of growing up in an Armenian-American community in Racine, during the 1930’s and 40’s, was released in May, 2015, by Beech Hill Publishing. Kherdian’s most recent release, also by Beech Hill, is the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Dividing River / The Meeting Shore, in December, 2015. His next release will be Volume 2 of A Stopinder Anthology, which completes the issuance in book format of all the major articles from his original groundbreaking Gurdjieff Journal For Our Time, totaling approximately 50 contributing authors.
Kherdian is the author and editor of over seventy books, including poetry, novels, memoirs, biographies, and children’s books, as well as critical studies, translations, and retellings. He has published nine contemporary American poetry anthologies, including Beat Voices (Henry Holt, 1995), and two seminal works: Down at the Santa Fe Depot: 20 Fresno Poets (The Giligia Press, 1970), that inspired a series of city and state anthologies, and Settling America: the Ethnic Expression of 14 Contemporary American Poets (Macmillan, 1974), one of the first multi-ethnic anthologies, published in this country.
Kherdian’s retelling of Monkey: A Journey to the West (Shambhala, 1992), the most popular classic of Asian literature, was selected by the Quality Paperback Division of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and was also purchased for television. His numerous awards for The Road From Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl, include a Newbery Honor Book Award, the Jane Addams Peace Award, The Boston Globe/ Horn Book Award, The Banta Award, The Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and a nomination for The American Book Award. He also was awarded The Friends of American Writers Award for his novel, Beyond Two Rivers, and for lifetime achievement the 1994 Notable Wisconsin Authors Award, and, in 2008, the Emily Lee Award, that was presented together with a Legislative Citation from the Wisconsin State Assembly. In the fall of 2012 he received The Armenian Star Award.
David Kherdian was the editor of Ararat Magazine, and the founding editor of Forkroads: A Journal of Ethnic-American Literature, as well as Stopinder: A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time. His wife, Caldecott Award winning children’s book illustrator, Nonny Hogrogian, was the art director for these journals.
Kherdian’s translations of the poetry of Charentz, Armenia’s greatest poet of the 20th century, was published in 2008. David Kherdian’s own works have been translated into fourteen languages around the world. An hour-long documentary on Kherdian’s poetry, by the New York independent filmmaker Jim Belleau, was released in 1997.
The Abbot Public Library is located at 235 Pleasant Street, Marblehead, MA 01945. For additional information, please call 781-631-1481 or visit www.abbotlibrary.org.
