Arpi Voskanyan was born in Stepanavan, in 1978. studied directing at the State Institute for Theater and Film in Yerevan and art history at the Art Academy of Yerevan. She started writing at the age of five, and her work was first published in 1990. Since 1995, Voskanyan’s work has appeared in all of Armenia’s trendsetting literary magazines. She published collection of prose-poems and experimental pieces “Tsik” is in 2001.

After the events that followed the 2008 elections, she turned her back on the literary press, regarding it as an institution out of touch with social issues. She prefers to publish in periodicals aligned with the political opposition.

In 2010 her poetry collection “Anteroedoes” (Left to His Fate) appeared in print, and in 2011 she published a story for young people Maradona and Ronaldinho. In 2012, together with the prose writer Hambardzoem Hambardzoemyan, she established the literary website Groghoetsav (groghucav.am), which aims to stimulate ‘responsible’ literature that engages closely with social, political and cultural issues.

Her short-stories collection "Not for sale" was published in 2016. Collection unites pieces of short fiction the author has worked on throughout 20 years, texts that have received either harsh criticism or different literary awards.

Become an Architect

It is already three days that I am waking up ashamed and happy,

like a married woman,

who in her dream has fallen in love with a man

and thinks about him all day

and does not know how to look at her husband

whom she loves and respects

and has no intention of leaving...

From where did these new passionate dreams come and cling to me?

the buildings, the buildings, the buildings,

rising up and spreading out,

cylinders, cones, cubes,

buildings: hanging from the clouds like flowers,

buildings: like trees, animals, people,

endless glass, metal, concrete, stone, wood and unknown materials...

I dismiss my thoughts about buildings,

and streets emerge in front of my eyes,

and I see entire cities and my heart amorously throbs,

a crazy, stupid, immature fool...

I google "Become an architect" afraid and embarrassed,

like I would google an unfamiliar man's name,

with whom I have suddenly, completely mindlessly and randomly 

fallen in love with...

While the page has not yet opened, I quickly close it;

Architect? Who, me? I am no builder.

What I feel a calling towards is collapsing my life...