Shushanik Kurghinian was an Armenian writer who became a catalyst in the development of socialist and feminist poetry. She is described as having "given a voice to the voiceless" and herself saw her role as a poet as "profoundly political".Her first poem was published in 1899 in Taraz, and in 1900 her first short story appeared in the journal Aghbyur. After founding the first Hunchakian women's political group in Alexandropol, Kurghinian fled to Rostov on Don in order to escape arrests of the tsarist regime. Her first volume of poetry, Ringing of the Dawn, was published in 1907, and one of her poems from this volume, "The Eagle's Love," was translated and included in Alice Stone Blackwell's second anthology Armenian Poems: Rendered into English Verse .
After the Russian Revolution, in 1921 she returned to Soviet Armenia where she lived until her death. Throughout her lifetime, Kurghinian cultivated significant relationships with famous members of the Armenian artistic and literary worlds of her time, including Vrtanes Papazian, Avetik Isahakian, Hovhannes Toumanian, Hrand Nazariantz and others.
Wikipedia
Source: Selected Works, 1982 Yerevan p260
