Writing memory: The search for home in Armenian diaspora literature as cultural practice

by Lorne Shirinian

“Lorne Shirinian's essays constitute a scholar's contribution to the efforts of 'communalisation' among diaspora Armenians, about which he has written with compassion and deep conviction.”
Irwin Streight, Department of English, Queen's University

In Writing Memory, Lorne Shirinian has written an important introduction, which places Armenian American literature in the context of the Armenian diaspora and analyzes its significance for this transnational culture. The book contains six essays and an afterword, in which Shirinian speculates as to the future of Armenian diaspora culture.

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

I was born in Toronto and began writing and publishing in the city at an early age. I received my PhD in Comparative Literature at the Université de Montréal and became a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston. I was Head of the department of English for a number of years and retired as Professor Emeritus in 2010 after 35 years of teaching.

I balanced my career between teaching courses on crime fiction, film noir and literature and film of the Holocaust and writing poetry, novels, plays and scholarly studies. When I was a student at the University of Toronto, I began making films and was serious about a career as a filmmaker. Life and its sometimes happy events, marriage to Noémi, my life partner for almost 40 years, and the birth of our two sons, Emmanuel and Benjamin, both gifted filmmakers, took my career path in another direction. Now that I've retired, I'm busy working on new literary projects as you will find in the "works in progress" section and also have returned to filmmaking.

After an absence of 43 years, we moved back to Toronto to be near our sons and grandchildren.