Role: Author

Naira Kuzmich was born in Armenia and raised in the Los Angeles enclave of Little Armenia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in West Branch, Blackbird, Ecotone, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the short story collection In Everything I See Your Hand. She passed away in 2017 from lung cancer.

Abraham Terian (born 1942) is a renowned Armenian theologian, scholar, and translator who is widely recognized as a leading expert in Classical Armenian, Patristics, and Hellenistic Judaism. Born in Jaffa and raised within the historic Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, his early life was deeply immersed in the liturgical and musical traditions of the Cathedral of St. James, which heavily inspired his lifelong dedication to ancient texts. After earning his Doctorate in Theology from the University of Basel in Switzerland, he spent decades in academia, most notably serving as the Academic Dean and Professor of Armenian Theology and Patristics at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New York from 1997 until his retirement in 2008. Terian is highly celebrated for his masterful English translations and critical annotations of early Christian and medieval Armenian literature—including works by Philo of Alexandria and the monumental prayers of St. Gregory of Narek—acting as a vital academic bridge that brings the treasures of ancient Armenian thought to modern global readers.

Gabriel Gavin is an accomplished British journalist, foreign correspondent, and author from Oxford who serves as a prominent diplomatic reporter for POLITICO Europe in Brussels. Specializing in the geopolitics, international relations, and energy conflicts of Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the post-Soviet space, he has reported from over a dozen countries for leading global publications such as TIME, Foreign Policy, The BBC, and The Spectator. He is highly celebrated for his deep on-the-ground reportage of Eurasian conflicts, culminating in the publication of his widely acclaimed debut book, Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh (2025). Published by Hurst and Oxford University Press, the book blends history with humane, firsthand civilian accounts to explore the tragic culmination of the long-simmering ethnic conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.