BIOGRAPHY

Perla Kantarjian is an award-winning Lebanese-Armenian writer, journalist, editor, and educator, whose work is currently focused on exploring transgenerational emotional legacies. Formerly a literature and journalist instructor at the International College in Beirut, Kantarjian was also a journalist for Annahar English and the founding executive editor of Carpe Diem, Annahar Newspaper’s literary segment, as well as a content writer for Bookstr. Her writings have appeared in over thirty publications and magazines worldwide, including Magma, Electric Literature, The Poetry Society, AMBIT, Lucent Dreaming, The Armenian Weekly, Panoply, Harpy Hybrid Review, Rusted Radishes, The International Literary Quarterly, Otherwise Engaged, Indelible, The Hellebore, Epoch Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Conjuncture, among others. She is currently Creative Communications Director for BLACK LEMON, the first Web3 Lab and NFT Production House in the MENA. She is also among the editorial team of Rusted Radishes - Beirut literary and arts journal at the American University of Beirut, an invited Creative Armenia Network member, and a member of the International Armenian Literary Alliance. Her work has been commended and awarded by Black Lawrence Press, Orison Books, Magma, Palette Poetry, The Poetry Society, Indigo Open Poetry Prize, South Downs Poetry Festival, wildfire words New Voices Award, and the E.H.P Barnard Poetry Prize. Her poem, “but i am only fiercely dreaming,” published in the 17th issue of Panoply, was recently selected as Editors’ Choice and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her surrealist poem, "Half Woman, Half Starlight" was selected by the founder of The Lunar Codex: Artists on the Moon project as one of the works by female literary artists to be placed in a time capsule, launched to the Moon and archived on its surface. She is the only Lebanese and the only Armenian artist aboard the time capsule. She has her BA in English Studies (Literature and Linguistics) and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia as the 2021-22 Sonny Mehta Scholar.