Peter Balakian to talk about history of Armenian Genocide at SJSU

PanARMENIAN.Net - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Peter Balakian will be joining San José State University President Mary Papazian for a discussion on the history of the Armenian Genocide on April 12.

Balakian won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for “Ozone Journal”, which recounts the speaker’s memory of excavating the bones of Armenian Genocide victims in the Syrian desert with a crew of television journalists.

He is the author of five other poetry collections and the memoir “Black Dog of Fate”, winner of the PEN/Albrand Prize for memoir, and “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide” and America’s Response’.

Balakian has published essays on poetry, culture, art, and social thought, and he’s appeared widely on national television and radio: ABC World News Tonight, The Charlie Rose Show, Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air”; NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” and CNN. He teaches at Colgate University.

Holding bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, Papazian became SJSU’s 30th president in 2016.

Both of them are of Armenian descent.

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