Peter Balakian is the author of several collections of poetry, including Ozone Journal (2015), which was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2016. In the same year, he was awarded Armenia’s Presidential Award for significant contribution to the process of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In 2012, Balakian was the recipient of the Spendlove Prize for Social Justice, Tolerance, and Diplomacy. The memoir of his quest to learn more about his family’s connection to the genocide and diaspora, Black Dog of Fate (1997), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir and was a New York Times Notable Book.
The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (2003) received the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best book in English on the subject of genocide and human rights.
Balakian has won the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Award and an award from the Academy of American Poets, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught Literature and courses on the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust for over 30 years.
