NAASR Armenian Studies | Lou Ann Matossian | Pioneering Armenian-American Writer Bedros Keljik

From Massachusetts to Minnesota: Pioneering Armenian-American Writer Bedros Keljik
A Lecture By Dr. Lou Ann Matossian
July 22, 2010, at the NAASR Center, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA
Author, activist, and entrepreneur Bedros Arakel Keljik (1874-1959), a student of Armenian realist Tlgadintzi, belongs to the founding generation of Armenian-American writers, yet his trenchant “sketches” of early immigrant life have only recently been rescued from obscurity.
After emigrating to the U.S. in 1890, the Kharpert native worked in the factories of Worcester and Fitchburg, Mass., then moved to Boston, where he became known as a fiery orator for the Hnchag Party. Active in Armenian literary circles, he collaborated with Alice Stone Blackwell on the groundbreaking anthology Armenian Poems (1896), then headed to Chicago. In November 1899 he arrived in St. Paul, the first Armenian to settle permanently in Minnesota, and started a family Oriental rug business now in its third generation.
Keljik’s collected short stories were published in 1944 as Armenian-American Sketches (Amerigahay Badgerner). “Chicago Characters,” the first of these to appear in English, was translated by Lou Ann Matossian for Ararat Quarterly in 1997. Having figured in two Armenian-American histories, Robert Mirak’s Torn Between Two Lands and Peter Balakian’s The Burning Tigris, the life and work of Bedros Keljik await rediscovery.