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

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.