Release date: Oct. 1, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Emory Lecture Explores American Response to Armenian Genocide

WHO: Peter Balakian, award-winning author, poet and memoirist

WHAT: Lecture: "The American Response to the Armenian Genocide"

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13

WHERE: Room 206, White Hall, 301 Dowman Dr., Emory. Free parking in the Fishburne and Peavine decks. For directions, go to www.emory.edu/WWW/directions.html

COST: Free and open to the public. 404-727-0896

Award-winning author, poet and memoirist Peter Balakian will give a public presentation on "The American Response to the Armenian Genocide" at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13 in White Hall, room 206, 301 Dowman Dr., Emory.

Balakian is the author of the 2003 bestseller "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response." A groundbreaking history of the Armenian genocide, the book relates the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and their systematic extermination in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rare archival documents and first-person accounts, Balakian presents the history of how fervent nationalists of the Young Turk government carried out the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I.

Balakian is author of eight books, including the memoir "Black Dog of Fate," which earned the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for the Art of the Memoir. Other books include critically acclaimed "June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000" and a book on the American poet Theodore Roethke. Balakian also served as co-translator of the Armenian poet Siamanto's "Bloody News From My Friend."

Balakian holds a Ph.D. in American civilization from Brown University and teaches at Colgate University, where he is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities.

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