I’m Anush, a cultural journalist and someone who is in the constant process of writing. There are texts which never leave the borders of my personal self, but I still keep writing and archiving those. But there are also texts which I transfer to other people further having nothing to do with that. For me, as a cultural journalist or a writer, I see myself somewhere in between, at some point which I can hardly define by myself.
The person and the story behind it
I love and appreciate mostly the person and the story behind him/her and that is exactly what I’m dealing throughout the years, observing that story from different angles, chronological principles, different relations, which I consider a very important task of my own.
Documenting is all mine
And what will be the result of those observations, be it a journalistic material, or an opus of any genre is not so important. The most important part of it is the process which I call documenting, and which can further be used anywhere.
About my long novel
I keep working on a piece which can be called a novel оr a ”channeling novel”. The most interesting part about it is that I constantly write and rewrite it and the process seems to be endless, but separate stories were extracted from it, mainly in the form of plays, which were made public and known even outside of Armenia, received awards, were performed and so on.
I listen, I live – I am a journalist
In the course of nine years as I write the novel so many fascinating things have been happening. While recording those stories, I became a documentalist and a cultural journalist, sometimes just a listener, the person who lived in the same area, since you have to live there to be able to present the story behind. Thus, I am the person who is presenting the story not changing the reality.
#i_am_independant
The main theme which I refer to constantly is the topic of independence, in the broadest sense, because I am also in the constant process of transformation and consequently the topic is being transformed together with me. The main questioning in that novel which I consider the most significant one is that I was born together with the independence, de-jure independence of my country, but I still cannot define for myself what independence really is.
Deeds make man immortal
Nowadays, literature has nothing to do with the author. It means that if the book has already been brought to life, it doesn’t matter if the author is a woman or man, it’s not important where it was written, what story lies behind the birth of the book, etc.; all those questions are not important any more. There is only the work which matters. If anyone is interested in the process, for example what were the difficulties the woman author had to face while writing, whether she is a feminist or not, having or not having problems, whether she wanted to be published but could not be, these are all the side questions which may be interesting to a literary critic or a student, from Faculty of Philology and Literature for example. In my opinion, the author’s personality should not be essential for the reader any more, it is the book itself which matters.
There is a girl who writes
From an early age I decided to bring to life the notion of a girl who writes. What-she-writes notion came later, when I found myself in certain circles, which are not typical to Armenia, but those which exist are very impressive. I listened a lot and I learned a lot. Afterwards, I’ve been to similar circles in other countries, but there, the text was the business card. For example, several years ago I was in Germany, at a famous festival, where twelve playwrights were presented. Once, in an informal gathering in the evening after the workshops, seminars and meetings, we had a chat about a certain process, which turned out to be very important and topical for all the participants, regardless of their nationality. Everybody told their stories related to that certain process. All those impressive stories stuck in my head and when I was back, I started to search for the local analogues of those stories. When you capture a process somewhere else in the frames of a story told by a representative of a different nation alongside with his notes and note-writing system, it is impossible that it doesn’t fit in your non-material world. And whenever it fits in, there come different comparisons, approaches, interesting views and viewpoints which only a human can showcase for other humans.
