Peter Balakian

Peter Balakian is an American poet, memoirist, and scholar, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University. Born in 1951 in Teaneck, New Jersey, of Armenian American heritage, he has devoted much of his work to bearing witness to the Armenian Genocide. His memoir Black Dog of Fate (1997) won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Memoir and brought wide attention to the story of the Armenian Genocide and its descendants. His collection Ozone Journal (2015) won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The collection moves between the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Holocaust, and the ecological catastrophes of the present, linking historical trauma to environmental destruction. Balakian's other collections include June-Tree (2001) and Ziggurat (2010). He has also published The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (2003), a historical work that appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.