Born in Armenia — a land where centuries of poetry and manuscript traditions converge with the fractures of modern history — Ani grew up immersed in a landscape where memory, identity, and transformation were lived realities, shaping from an early age a consciousness attuned to the fragility and endurance of human experience. From seven, she navigated piano lessons, choir rehearsals, and afternoons lost in books, cultivating a curiosity that would later define her literary practice. Music gave way to words as she pursued cultural studies, art history, and philosophy in Yerevan, before expanding her practice in London to encompass documentary, nonfiction, and creative writing, probing the boundaries of memory, narrative, and self.
Ani is a quietly rigorous observer, opposed to mass-produced literature and the spectacle of fame. Early recognition hinted at wider acclaim: before twenty-three, she won both the Grand Prize and the Jury Prize at a national literary contest, becoming its youngest laureate. Yet she turned away from notoriety, considering fame the cheapest value one could pursue. She withdrew into seven years of deliberate solitude, refining her craft, cultivating a private life, and studying photography at Sussex University to shape her own visual presence, resisting the gaze of others. This orientation toward depth and intentionality informs her work: her voice and subjects are rare rather than merely unique, creating literature that prizes resonance, rigor, and enduring attention over ubiquity or trend.
Her literary and interdisciplinary practice has unfolded across residencies, stages, and international collaborations, reflecting both restless inquiry and a commitment to cultural dialogue. Ani has presented her work across Europe and North America, including panels on women’s experiences of war at the International Comic-Salon Erlangen (Germany, 2024) and the British Embassy Yerevan’s ‘The Female Face of the Conflict.’ She has been invited as a guest speaker on Armenian literature, identity, and decolonial contexts at the University of California, Berkeley (2024), University of Sussex, Brighton, and the American University of Armenia, where her writing is included in syllabi.
Her projects are equally expansive: she was writer-in-residence at Villa Empain, Boghossian Foundation (Brussels, 2024) and the Erlangen International Comic Salon (Germany, 2024), and co-authored the EU Creative Europe-funded graphic novel One Meme Away from War (2025), exploring the intersections of visual storytelling and conflict. Her literary work appears in Words Without Borders (USA) and Absinthe: A Journal of World Literature (University of Michigan), and she is preparing forthcoming novels that further interrogate memory, identity, and transformation. Complementing her written work, she has developed her voice in audio projects in collaboration with Lisbon-based cultural actors and creators. Ani’s practice has been recognized with a Chevening Scholarship to the University of Sussex, support from state institutions for artistic research and literary creation, and nominations to prestigious residencies including the Iowa International Writing Program.