about my writing

I was teaching piano to young children in a cozy Virginia suburb when in 2015, I packed up and moved to my mother’s ancestral homeland. Deeply affected by the unsettling juxtaposition of extreme poverty, decaying urban infrastructure, and immense natural beauty in Armenia, I began a grueling transition: from classical music to writing.

My first gig was at Yerevan Magazine, editing and covering the arts and entertainment beat. From there, I traveled across the country writing copy for humanitarian crowdfunding campaigns. As my work took me to more rural settings, I could not help but notice the disintegration of regional environments and economies, first through the lens of food, and then through the lens of pollution. In 2016, I took action leading an initiative against plastic shopping bag waste, called Toprak Petq Chi (“I don’t need a bag”), which has since been adopted by the government of Armenia.

I returned to the United States in 2017, spending two formative years editing The Armenian Weekly, a historic community newspaper based in Watertown, Massachusetts (as well as a brief stint hosting their podcast). I left that role to cover consumerism and waste as a freelancer. My writings have appeared locally in Dig Boston and nationally in Smithsonian.com, The Counter, Civil Eats, Ensia and I freelance regularly for the waste vertical at the business publication Industry Dive. I also enjoyed some subversive real estate in the alternative arts newspaper, the Boston Compass, where I penned a monthly column called “Letters to My Corporate Overlords,” which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

In 2022, I moved to wine country. Today, I live in the Napa Valley with my husband and young son, where I run a small, forward-thinking piano studio out of our home called Browns Valley Keys, and work towards my public school teaching credential.