With deep sadness we must share that Naira Kuzmich, who graduated from ASU's MFA in Creative Writing Program in 2013, passed away in October 2017.

Naira was born in Armenia and raised in the Los Angeles enclave of Little Armenia. Her fiction can be found in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, West Branch, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, Carve, Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has appeared and is forthcoming in Ecotone, The Threepenny Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, Guernica, and The Southern Review, among others.

Naira was an extraordinarily gifted writer, whose work often explored themes of cultural identity, displacement, and the experience of the Armenian diaspora. From a member of her cohort: "Naira was so talented and so poised to make a mark on the literary world, offering a model for how a serious and disciplined writing practice could look. I'm endlessly grateful to her for that."

We will all miss her, and her voice.

—Tara Ison

Image of Naira Kuzmich from Hayden's Ferry Review