Nanore Barsoumian was born in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. When she was 3, militants kidnapped her father Hagop Barsoumian, a Syrian-born Armenian-American history professor and political activist; she never saw him again. At 13, she moved to Montreal, and, at 14, to Boston. By high school graduation, she had attended 8 schools in 6 cities, and 4 countries. She is fluent in English and Armenian, and conversational in Arabic and French.
In 2023, Barsoumian joined the NYU Global Institute for Advanced Studies as a research fellow, working on the Armenian Genocide Denial Project. From 2009 to 2016, she worked as a staff writer and later editor for the English-language diasporic newspaper The Armenian Weekly, reporting from across the U.S., Armenia, Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh, and Turkey.
Barsoumian is at work on her debut novel, which centers on themes of belonging and self-invention. She lives with her husband, dog, and the world’s prettiest tortoise.
[Barsoumian’s 2011 wedding to photographer Aaron Spagnolo at Occupy Boston was covered in In These Times, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Spagnolo had been covering the encampment for The Boston Phoenix at the time.]
Author Photo By Aaron Spagnolo