Susanna Harutyunyan

Susanna Harutyunyan (Սուսաննա Հարությունյան; born February 15, 1963) is an Armenian writer who has created eight novels. In 2016 she won the Presidential Award for Literature.

Life
Harutyunyan was born in Karchaghbyur in 1963 and when she was ten then she began to write and she achieved some publication.

In about 1988 she started to write fiction and ten years later after her children had grown up she says that her work became more serious. She avoids long descriptions as she wants her reader to be a partner in creating the story. After writing eight novels including Map Without Land and Waters her work has been translated into Persian, Greek, Romanian, Azerbaijani, German, Kazakh and English.

Harutyunyan organised the Kauaran group of writers and the editor of Kayaran literary magazine and she also writes short stories.

In 2016 she won the Presidential Award for Literature for her novel Ravens before Noah. That novel had been translated into English in 2011. Her play The Harmony was performed in Iran after it was translated into Persian.

Her work is firmly based on facts. In one of her stories God has been here she included a girl who glowed in the dark. She says she existed. She had a build up of phosphorus in her body and Harutyunyan remembers her and the people who visited her. She feels that Armenian writers do not travel as much as they might because of funds. In fact authors have to guess at the reaction of European reads of their work because the country's writers do not meet enough of their peers.