The Animal / El Animal

David Kherdian is the author and editor of over eighty books, that include poetry, novels, memoirs, biographies retellings and children's books. His anthologies include Beat Voices, and two seminal works: Settling America: The Ethnic Expression of 14 Contemporary Poets and Forgotten Bread: Armenian American Writers of the First Generation. With his wife, two-time Caldecott Medalist, Nonny Hogrogian, they have managed three small presses, and as editor/art director, three disparate journals: Ararat: A Quarterly, Forkroads: A Journal of Ethnic-American Literature, and Stopinder: A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time. He has, with his presses, journals and anthologies, along with is own work, helped to place ethnic writing into the canon of American literature. It was following their flight from America after the 2017 election that Kherdian's long dormancy iin that form, that his poetry moved to a higher plane, resulting in his putting this book together with old work and new poems.His many awards include the Newbery Honor Book, The Friends of American Writers Award, the Boston Globe / Horn Book Award, the Jane Addams Award, a nomination for The American Book Award, and two lifetime achievement awards, The Emily Lee Award from his hometown, and The Armenian Star Award. His translations and retellings include the Asian Classic, Monkey: A Journey to the Wes, and the 9th century epic from Armenia, David of Sassoun, now out of print, with tentative plans for its reissue, being the book Kherdian considers his highest achievement as a writer. An hour long documentary of his poetry and life by filmmaker Jim Belleau was released in 1997, and can now be seen among his YouTube appearances.