Tag Archives: Armenia

Now Available My Armenia Novel in Paperback ($8.95) and #Kindle – (I’d Buy the Paperback)

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

My Armenia novel, “An Excess of Nationalism”, is now available in paperback and kindle. Paperback is best value ($8.95), I personally would never buy a kindle and can’t read kindle books. I need to feel the paper, smell the pages, … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review | Tagged | 3 Comments

I Wrote My Armenia Novel!!!

Posted on April 14, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

A while ago I published a post in which I said “I Should Be Writing My Armenia Book”. I’m happy to report, now, I FINISHED IT!!!! I published first as a hardcover, in color, because I left some surprises inside … Continue reading →

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Tolstoy and Steinbeck

Posted on April 2, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

The first time I arrived to Armenia it was spring of 2019. Still cold, the people of Yerevan were bundled tight, cigarettes poking defiantly out of layers of coats and hats and scarfs. There was a snow storm the first … Continue reading →

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William Saroyan – A Daring Young Man

Posted on November 19, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

William Saroyan is the most well-known American/Armenian writer. His family arrived, like so many of the Armenian diaspora, fleeing the genocide at the tail of end of the Ottoman Empire. Saroyan had the seeds of greatness and genius. I think … Continue reading →

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On Home

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

We are all born for somewhere else, I think. While we all have a sense of place coded deep within our DNA, a source of conflict and anger to be sure but also something that gives a tremendous sense of … Continue reading →

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I Should Be Writing My Armenia Book

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

This essay represents a failure, not complete for I remain optimistic but certainly a success deferred. I should be writing my Armenia novel. Each passing day, it gets a little harder. My parenthesis utopia is moving deeper into the past, … Continue reading →

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A Parenthesis Utopia

Posted on May 29, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

One of the difficult lessons I learned from COVID and beyond (because the world won’t be the same, at least not for us) was how futile efforts at utopia are. When COVID hit in February 2020 I was living in … Continue reading →

Posted in International Affairs, Travel | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

On Writing

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

It’s difficult to be a writer in America in 2022. Of course, it’s always been difficult to be a writer. Anywhere. It requires a measure of sacrifice; a Sisyphean sense of the futile; and an overinflated perception of self. Writers … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature | Tagged | 2 Comments

An Armenian Sketchbook

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Vasily Grossman understood Armenia. And thusly, Armenia saved his live; as it did for Osip Mandelstam. As it did for me. Armenia saved his life, though he was to die only two years after visiting Armenia. Despite that “An Armenian … Continue reading →

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The Pandemic is Over

Posted on March 6, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Last night I attended a musical event hosted in Alexandria, VA by Common Sense Society, an organization dedicated to promoting the civilizational virtues of liberty, prosperity and beauty. Celtic music, love songs from times of war and hardship on the … Continue reading →

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