Perla Kantarjian is a Lebanese-Armenian writer born and raised in Lebanon. Her work appears in Electric Literature, Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, Wasafiri, Poetry Wales, Magma, Oxford University’s TORCH anthology, and elsewhere. Her poem was selected for the Lunar Codex project and is archived on the Moon.

She was finalist for the Orison Books Best Spiritual Literature Award in Poetry, runner-up selected by Glyn Maxwell for the Arts University Bournemouth International Poetry Prize, and runner-up in the Indigo Dreams Poetry Prize. Her poems were commended by Vanessa Kisuule for The Poetry Society‘s Protest Poetry Challenge and in the EHP Barnard Spring Poetry Prize, and highly commended by Naomi Foyle in the South Downs Poetry Competition. Her work was shortlisted by Kandace Siobhan Walker for the Lucent Dreaming Poetry Prize, shortlisted by Inua Ellams for the Bridport Prize, and longlisted by Jos Charles for the Palette Poetry Sappho Prize.

Perla holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she was selected as the sole 2021-22 Sonny Mehta Scholar from the MENA. She was a journalist and Executive Editor at Annahar newspaper, where she co-founded Lebanon’s first newspaper literary section, and taught journalism and literature at International College in Beirut. She currently serves on the editorial team at Rusted Radishes, Beirut’s literary journal at the American University of Beirut. She also leads narrative strategy and communications for major blockchain and fintech companies.

Raised speaking Armenian and Arabic, she writes in her third language, English. Her debut poetry collection You Must Become Field— shortlisted by Alycia Pirmohamed for Magma’s Open Poetry Pamphlet Competition, selected by Eduardo C. Corral as semi-finalist for the University of Wisconsin’s Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes, and as semi-finalist for Black Lawrence Press‘s St. Lawrence Book Award—is forthcoming from Bad Betty Press (UK) in September 2026.