Greece to host events dedicated to William Saroyan throughout 2011

PanARMENIAN.Net - Greece will host series of events dedicated to Armenian-American writer William Saroyan throughout 2011.

The first event was held on April 13 in the hall of the Hellenic American Union.

Nazik Aydinian, Haik Kassardjian, Hellen Kassesian and Laurence Menentian featured a live narration of some of Saroyan’s works during it.

The event was initiated by the Hellenic American Union, Armenian embassy in Athens, as well as the Hellenic-Armenian Studies Center.

Saroyan was born in Fresno, California to Armenian immigrants from Bitlis. At the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan was placed in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described in his writing. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself by taking odd jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San Francisco Telegraph Company.

Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father's writings. A few of his early short articles were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s. Many of Saroyan's stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley, or dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

As a writer Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story magazine with The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken from the nineteenth century song of the same title.

Saroyan died in Fresno, at age 72. Half of his ashes were buried in California and the remainder in Armenia at Komitas Pantheon.