EVENT DETAILS

The Weight of History in Fiction and Non-Fiction: A Conversation

"The Weight of History in Fiction and Non-Fiction: A Conversation with authors Aline Ohanesian and Dawn MacKeen, moderated by Dr. Nasrin Rahimieh"

Dawn Anahid MacKeen is the author of The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey, which chronicles
her grandfather’s survival of genocide. The book, a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, received
the American Society of Journalists and Authors’s best biography award. Previously she was a staff writer
at Salon, Newsday, and SmartMoney. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ELLE, the
Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times Magazine, and elsewhere. Her website is www.dawnmackeen.com
and her Twitter handle is @DawnMacKeen

Aline Ohanesian’s debut novel, Orhan’s Inheritance, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize,
the PEN Bellwether Award for Socially Engaged Fiction, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was
shortlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize which makes it the perpetual bridesmaid of literary
novels. Winner of the 2015 Tololyan Prize for Contemporary Fiction, a Barnes &Noble Discovery Pick and
the #1 Indie pick for April 2015, the novel is an international bestseller and has been translated into over
ten languages. Ohanesian, who is currently working on her second novel, lives and writes in Orange
County, California with her husband and two sons. Her website is www.AlineOhanesian.com and her
Twitter handle is @AlineOhanesian

Dr. Nasrin Rahimieh is the Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Comparative
Literature Department at UCI. She is the author of Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity
(Routledge, 2016) and Forugh Farrokhzad: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry, coedited
with Dominic Parviz Brookshaw