Tamar Marie BoyadjianTamar Marie Boyadjian is a poet, fantasy author, essayist, translator, educator, and editor. She is the author of it is what it is (Yerevan: Antares), a book of concrete poetry in Western Armenian and the first book of poetry to be published in the lnguage by a US born author. She is also the author of the first fantasy series to appear in Western Armenian, The Mepe & the Dragon (Los Angeles: Arpi Publishing, 2024). TMB is also a medievalist and a lover of the medieval world. She pursued this passion and earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA in 2010. She has published and lectured extensively on the premodern Mediterranean, particularly drawing attention to the prominent place of the medieval Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Her monograph, The City Lament: Jerusalem Across the Medieval Mediterranean (Cornell University Press, 2018) was the recipient of the NAASR Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies. From 2020-2024, she was the Editor-in-Chief of the foremost periodical of Armenology in the Western Hemisphere, the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. Read More Read Less