Friday, February 27th, 7:30pm - 9pm

LITERATURE DURING GENOCIDE

An Inaugural Reading & Conversation at Watermelon Books LA with Award-Winning Novelists Randa Jarrar & Nancy Kricorian

Watermelon Books LA presents its first public event — a powerful evening of literature, solidarity, and shared histories of diaspora and genocide connecting Palestinian and Armenian experiences.

As survivors of ethnic cleansing and genocide, Armenian and Palestinian communities share intertwined histories of loss, endurance, and resistance that continue to inform liberation struggles and shape global solidarity today.

Through fiction and memoir, our featured authors explore the search for home across generations shaped by dispossession, displacement, and exile. Their works affirm writing as an act of resistance—one that preserves memory, asserts truth, and creates connections beyond borders.

FEATURING

RANDA JARRAR

Award-winning Palestinian writer and performer

Author of Love Is an Ex-Country (2016), Him, Me, Muhammad Ali: Stories (2016), A Map of Home (2008)

Randa Jarrar is a Palestinian author and performer whose work confronts belonging, identity, and power with humor, intimacy, and fearless honesty. Randa is the recipient of the American Book Award and a Creative Capital Award, and the author of three books, including A Map of Home, the first novel published about a queer Palestinian girl. Learn more about Randa at randajarrar.com

NANCY KRICORIAN

Award-Winning novelist of the Armenian diaspora

Author of The Burning Heart of the World (2025), Zabelle (1998), Dreams of Bread and Fire (2003), and All the Light There Was (2013)

Nancy Kricorian is the author of four novels centered on post-genocide Armenian diaspora experience. Her most recent novel, The Burning Heart of the World, is set among Armenians in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.. She has been a mentor with We Are Not Numbers since 2015 and lives in New York.  Learn more about Nancy at https://nancykricorian.net

WHY THIS NIGHT MATTERS

This event reflects Watermelon Books’ commitment to building a cultural home rooted in history, truth, and literary resistance.

Stories connect us. Solidarity sustains us.

🚙 🚗 Street Parking is available on Adams Blvd., as well as neighboring side streets Rimpau and Harcourt.

Please call/text 310-403-9800 with questions.