New Writing

‘how do you say f*** you in your language?’ by UEA student Perla Kantarjian has been commended in The Poetry Society Young Poets Network Protest Poetry Challenge. Perla (pictured) is Lebanese-Armenian writer, journalist and editor, and is currently completing the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UEA as the 2022 Sonny Mehta Scholar. She was formerly the executive editor of Carpe Diem, Annahar Newspaper’s literary segment, and has published her writing in over thirty other publications, including The Armenian Weekly, Stripes Magazine, Panoply, Harpy Hybrid Review, Rusted Radishes, The International Literary Quarterly, Otherwise Engaged, Indelible, The Hellebore, Epoch Press, and Anti-Heroin Chic. Perla has also taught English literature and journalism at the International College in Beirut. Her surrealist poem, ‘Half Woman, Half Starlight’ was selected for The Lunar Codex: Artists on the Moon project as one of the works by female literary artists to be placed in a time capsule and launched to the moon. Earlier this year her poem ‘Gate 12, Now Boarding’ was the winner of the Illuminarium Chronicles Continental Voices Competition, while another poem ‘Hysteron Proteron’ came second in the Indigo Dreams Publishing Open Poetry Prize. ‘Survival Skill’ was commended in the EHP Barnard Spring Poetry Prize, ‘I, Motherland’ was Highly Commended in the South Downs Poetry Competition, and she was also Highly Commended in the Wildfire Words New Voices First Pamphlet Award.