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An imaginative and gifted writer, Ani Minasian has won awards for her poetry and plays. She writes in both English and Armenian, injecting some works with both languages simultaneously. As an American-born Armenian with strong ties to her culture, she walks a high-wire between both cultures, striving to integrate in her work the two cultures she embodies. Inspired by accessible yet profound writers such as Hovanes Toumanian and Paulo Coelho, her poems and plays read easily but deliver a subtle, quiet punch.
As an elementary school student, Minasian’s creativity and writing acumen caught the attention of teachers, and received her first blue ribbon for writing in junior high. She began songwriting at age 12, graduating to poetry later in high school. It was in college that she indulged her passion for theatre, writing plays and earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre with an emphasis in playwriting and publicity. Here, Minasian again captured the attention of her mentors and peers.
Her very first one-act play was directed by the theatre department chair and entered by the department in the American College Theatre Festival (ACTF). The university’s literary journal, which had never considered publishing theatrical works, published her second play and expanded its criteria thereafter to include theatrical submissions. She was one of a dozen student playwrights chosen to study first with Tony Award-winning playwright Arthur Kopit and then, two years later, with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson.
After college, Minasian participated in the Young Playwrights’ Lab at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC) and worked as the publicist for the City of Brea’s civic theatre. For her most successful play, Hotel S.S.R., she first wrote the script in Armenian and then translated it into English to maintain the cultural authenticity of the characters.
A naturally gifted singer, Minasian returned to school to study music and entered a very prolific period of songwriting, recording her introductory album and racking up enough songs to fill several albums. Her debut EP garnered positive reviews from industry publications and received radio airplay. One song off the album was nominated with a dozen other songs out of 140,000 submissions for the Pop Song category of the Just Plain Folks Music Awards. In the meantime, she also channeled her publicity background into the writing of advertising content and press releases for business.
In the non-fiction arena, she has earned a living writing advertising, publicity and website content for businesses in various industries. She occasionally writes for local publications and her profiles of community pioneers in Florence, Italy were published in The Florence Newspaper.
Temporarily taking a break from publishing her two blogs, Minasian is currently working on several writing projects which are in various stages of development.
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