Raffi Joe Wartanian '21 Named 2025 Poet Laureate Fellow

Nonfiction alum Raffi Joe Wartanian ’21 was named an Academy of American Poets 2025 Poet Laureate Fellow. The fellowship will support Wartanian as he launches the San Gabriel Valley Phoenix Poets project, an endeavor that will support children who lost access to their schools in the 2025 Eaton Fire. Wartanian is currently the inaugural Poet Laureate of Glendale, California.

The Academy of American Poets awarded the $50,000 grants to twenty-three poets laureate across the country, investing in total over $1 million. “These fellowships recognize poets laureate for their literary excellence while enabling them to undertake impactful and timely projects that engage their communities through the transformative power of poetry,” said the Academy.

Wartanian’s Phoenix Poets project—named after the mythical, immortal bird that rises from its own ashes—will bring the community together to mourn, remember, celebrate, express and recover through poetry. The project includes workshops and readings led by Wartanian and the poems generated by the community will be collected into an anthology. The Phoenix Poets project also plans to have a fundraiser to launch a scholarship. 

“As poet laureate and through this fellowship, my role is to listen deeply, bring forward many kinds of stories, and lift up the common ground we share,” Wartanian said. “Poetry within community-centered frameworks becomes a platform for discovery, deeper understanding, and the collective insight that emerges when many narratives surface side by side.” 

Wartanian’s experiences of community outreach at Columbia inspired him to apply to become Glendale’s inaugural poet laureate.

“During my time at Columbia’s School of the Arts, I was fortunate to pursue initiatives that deepened my appreciation for the ways civic life and creative writing are woven together. With Columbia Artist/Teachers, I led sessions at Rikers Island and the Manhattan VA. Through Davis Projects for Peace and the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, I received grants to design writing-based conflict transformation programs with youth in Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Wartanian said. “In every case, I witnessed how such efforts can empower writers, cultivate empathy, and strengthen the civic fabric.”

Raffi Wartanian is Glendale’s inaugural poet laureate as well as a writer, musician, and professor at UCLA. His poems and essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The LA Review of Books, Lapham’s Quarterly, No Dear Press and Ararat Magazine. He is descended from survivors of the Armenian Genocide and, in 2017, collaborated with Abril Books, the Lakota People’s Law Project and In His Shoes to launch a multi-day performance and workshop called Days of Solidarity: Celebrating Armenian and Native American Survival.