Libretto for the Desert

Sona Van (Sona Ter-Hovhannisyan) is a poet and essayist who was born in Yerevan, Armenia. Her books of poetry have been translated into more than seventeen languages. She is the recipient of many awards including the gold medal from Armenia’s Ministry of Culture, a Homer-the European Medal of Poetry and Art, the Ianicus Literary Prize and in 2019 she was the recipient of the 1573 International Poetry Prize in China. In the US, she received many recognitions including the Woman In Literature Award from the California Senate.

Beata Poźniak, known for playing Marina Oswald in Oscar nominated JFK, has narrated bestsellers The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great and Illuminae, which received an Audie Award. The Tsar of Love and Techno was selected in the Top 5 Best Audiobooks of the Year by the Washington Post. She received an Earphones Award for narrating Nobel Prize–winning Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and another Earphones Award for The Light in Hidden Places, which followed a Voice Arts Award Nomination for Libretto for the Desert: Poetry Dedicated for the Victims of Genocide and War.