DR. VARTAN MATIOSSIAN AMONG THE WINNERS OF TRANSLATION PRIZE

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) announced the winners of the 2020 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prizes for Excellence in Armenian Studies: Prof. Houri Berberian for the monograph Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds (University of California Press) and Dr. Lou Ann Matossian, Dr. Vartan Matiossian, and the late Aris Sevag for the translation of Bedros Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches (The Armenian Studies Series of the Press at California State University, Fresno). The 2020 awards are for books with a 2019 publication date.

NAASR’s Aronian Book Prizes were established in 2014 by the late Dr. Aronian and Dr. Geoffrey Gibbs, to be awarded annually to outstanding scholarly works in the English language in the field of Armenian Studies and translations from Armenian into English.

The prize awarded for the translation of Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches (originally published in 1944 in Armenian as Amerigahay Badgerner), recognizes a team effort which includes the efforts of the three translators—Aris Sevag, Dr. Lou Ann Matossian, and Dr. Vartan Matiossian—as well as the publication’s co-editors Christopher Atamian and Barlow Der Mugrdechian. (Matossian also served as a co-editor.) Lou Ann Matossian first translated one of Keljik’s “sketches” and published it in Ararat Quarterly in 1997 and subsequently lectured on Keljik at NAASR in 2010; the late Aris Sevag translated the remainder of the book prior to his death in 2012; and Dr. Matiossian, the Executive Director of the Prelacy, translated additional Keljik pieces published in the Baikar Annual in the 1940s.

Copies of Armenian-American Sketches are available from the Prelacy Bookstore.