What does it feel like to be the only Armenian-Russian speculative fiction writer (in English)?
A little weird, to be honest. I am not sure why more Armenian-Russian writers haven’t popped up out of the woodwork (just watch, tomorrow someone will show up to prove me Capitally Wrong). There are many Russian SF and fantasy writers writing in their native language back in Russia, and some in English here in the US (Ekaterina Sedia comes to mind) but I can’t think of any recent or contemporary Armenians who write, short of William Saroyan, and not any who write speculative fiction. I may be wrong: I hope I am wrong. Armenians are an imaginative, clever, adaptable, quick and joyful people, and the literature of imagination seems to be just the kind of thing they would embrace. Give it time, I say, and we’ll have an Armenian Tolkien. His last name will be “Tolkienian,” of course (inside joke, all Armenian last names end in “-ian” and occasionally “-yan”). On the other hand, I feel like a Middle Eastern leather merchant (don’t laugh, my great-grandfather was one) with a private key to a
