Presentation of Ingnagir 11 at the National Gallery (photos)

Editor of Ingnagir, poet Violet Grigoryan, spoke about the principles behind selecting the authors and works for the issue:

“The choice of authors is a deliberate policy. Alongside established writers, we have included first-time authors—people from other professions who are publishing for the first time—as well as young and mid-career creators. The previous issue had a clear thematic direction, but this one is different. If I had to describe it in one phrase, I would call it ‘aftershock literature.’

We present the tectonic shifts of the post-war period. To be honest, it’s very difficult for a writer to write today. Literature requires vision. Sometimes the page is filled with commas—that is also the author’s viewpoint. We constantly seek innovation, but we treat literature with utmost seriousness.”

Writer and critic Edgar Martirosyan, one of the contributors to Ingnagir 11, reflected on his piece:

“I’ve been living and writing outside Armenia for seven years, mainly in another language. In this article, I expressed my thoughts in Armenian, and they almost feel like translations of my past seven years of experience.”

Poet Ruzan Grigoryan, published in Ingnagir for the first time, described her motivation:

“I am a poet of the 90s. After the war, there was too much noise, and there was a need for words. Those who died in the war were from a generation so close to me, they could have been my children. That’s why I wrote—because silence was no longer possible.”

Film critic and director Aram Dovlatyan, who contributed a short story, reflected on the contrast between cinema and literature:

“The key difference is between dramaturgical and mass thinking. Every film carries a producer’s shadow; a director is often limited in the creative process, while writers are free. One of the problems of Armenian cinema today is that it has distanced itself from literature. The first Armenian films were based on literary works—Armenian literature gave birth to Armenian cinema.”

Poet Marine Petrosyan, also featured in the issue, emphasized the vital role of art:

“Art is not meant to hang on walls or sit on bookshelves—it is meant to save lives. When I look back at my first book, published in the years of Independence, I see a different reality: the years of victory. Today, defeat and survival shape us differently. Over time, I’ve let reality into my poems. Politics has become, for me, the most urgent theme—it decides whether we will live or not. Words can change things in Armenia, and as a poet, I hold on to that belief.”

Ingnagir 10 was published by Newmag in 2023, also with the support of the “Renaissance” Foundation. With its 11th issue, the magazine once again offers a rich and multifaceted literary map of contemporary Armenian thought and creativity.