Poet Alicia Ghiragossian Passes Away –

LOS ANGELES—Renowned poet Alicia Ghiragossian passed away on Thursday, May 22, at her residence in Los Angeles. She was 78.

Born in 1936 in Cordoba, Argentina, Alicia Ghiragossian has authored numerous volumes of poetry in both Armenian and Spanish. Among her works was also a translation of Raffi’s “The Fool” to Spanish.

In 1996 Alicia was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. It was the first time that a person of Armenian descent was ever nominated in that category.

She was the author of 61 volumes, most of them poetry.

Her meteoric rise to fame occurred in 1967, when she won a prize in Europe with her second book, which had been translated into Italian. The book was published in Italy with illustrations of Picasso, Fontana, Petorutti, Presta and Le Parc. Immediately after, a selection of her poems, translated into Armenian, appeared in the literature vault of Soviet Armenia. The book, published in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, was an instant best seller and she became an overnight legend.

In 1997 she was granted the Honorary Citizenship of Armenia. And since 2008, Alicia Ghiragossián was an Honorary Doctor of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.

In South America, some composers, such as internationally acclaimed Argentine tango icon Astor Piazzolla, have composed music inspired by her poetry.