Background
Edgarian, Carol Louise was born on April 29, 1962 in New Britain, Connecticut, United States. Daughter of Gerald Alex Edgarian and Barbara Elizabeth Carpenter.
(*A new edition of RISE THE EUPHRATES with an introduction...)
*A new edition of RISE THE EUPHRATES with an introduction by the author is now available on Amazon. Please search for Rise the Euphrates: 20th Anniversary Edition* An international bestseller in hardcover and winner of the ANC Freedom Award, "Rise the Euphrates" is now available in this elegant paperback edition. A contemporary woman's coming of age story, the novel reaches back to 1915 Armenia, when Seta Loon's family is fractured in the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. Two generations later, Seta, the novel's lyrical narrator, must alter her family's legacy. "The daughter assumes what is unfinished in her mother's life," Seta learns. Caught between the generations, between American and Armenian cultures in her Connecticut town, Seta confronts an even fiercer division, the one within herself. The wisdom she gains frees the next generation in Carol Edgarian's stunningly original and ground-breaking novel. PRAISE FOR RISE THE EUPHRATES "This is a book whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity and finally ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today — daring, heartbreaking and affirmative, giving order and sense to our random lives." —Washington Post Book World “A stunning debut—a book that will doubtless haunt its readers as it beguiles them." —The Miami Herald "...Vivid, chilling...RISE THE EUPHRATES' richly drawn characters and the haunted voice of the narrator will long remain in readers' memories." —Robert Stone "How often do you get to read a book that captures you so entirely and deeply that it controls your days, measures them out and defines them by how long it will be before you can get to your next night's reading? RISE THE EUPHRATES is on of these rare treasures: a work of power, grace, beauty and exquisite tenderness. This book goes beyond the reading experience; it reminds you of your own hopes and terrors. RISE THE EUPHRATES will live for a long, long time in the manner of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." —Rick Bass "A novel of extraordinary compassion, it's also a dead-on view of assimilation and the American experience." —Phoenix Gazette "The writing is so good it can raise the hairs on your neck." —Elizabeth Berg, Mademoiselle
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984381643/?tag=2022091-20
(A modern-day Armenian-American girl, Seta Loon finds hers...)
A modern-day Armenian-American girl, Seta Loon finds herself caught between her grandmother, a survivor of the Turkish massacre of Armenians, and her mother, and struggling with her own feelings of conflict and alienation. A first novel. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679426019/?tag=2022091-20
(An international bestseller, now available in this twenti...)
An international bestseller, now available in this twentieth-anniversary revised edition, Rise the Euphrates reaches back to 1915, when nine-year-old Casard witnesses the massacre of her family during the Armenian genocide. Casard emigrates to America to put the unspeakable past behind her; yet as the years pass and her only daughter, Araxie, marries outside the clan, making her husband and their children odar—outsiders—the rift between mother and daughter threatens once again to tear the family apart. It falls to Seta, the novel’s lyrical narrator and Casard’s granddaughter, to alter her family’s legacy. “The daughter assumes what is unfinished in her mother’s life,” Seta learns. Caught between the generations, and between the American and Armenian cultures in her Connecticut town, Seta confronts the fiercest division: the one within herself. The wisdom she gains frees the next generation in Carol Edgarian’s stunningly original and groundbreaking novel. PRAISE FOR RISE THE EUPHRATES "This is a book whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity and finally ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today — daring, heartbreaking and affirmative, giving order and sense to our random lives." —Washington Post Book World “Edgarian’s sumptuous writing and uncommon wisdom about the human spirit and its maiming seep into a reader’s heart, refusing to leave. This is a stunning debut, a book that will doubtless haunt its readers as it beguiles them." —The Miami Herald "...Vivid, chilling...RISE THE EUPHRATES' richly drawn characters and the haunted voice of the narrator will long remain in readers' memories." —Robert Stone "How often do you get to read a book that captures you so entirely and deeply that it controls your days, measures them out and defines them by how long it will be before you can get to your next night's reading? RISE THE EUPHRATES is on of these rare treasures: a work of power, grace, beauty and exquisite tenderness. This book goes beyond the reading experience; it reminds you of your own hopes and terrors. RISE THE EUPHRATES will live for a long, long time in the manner of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." —Rick Bass "A novel of extraordinary compassion, it's also a dead-on view of assimilation and the American experience." —Phoenix Gazette "The writing is so good it can raise the hairs on your neck." —Elizabeth Berg, Mademoiselle “To the list of well-wrought generational sagas—John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Alex Haley’s Roots, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club—add Carol Edgarian’s powerful first novel, RISE THE EUPHRATES.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Few first novels are as deeply felt, yet so clearly communicative, as this one. It touches universals while powerfully evoking the everyday world in which we cope within our families with past, present and future. . . . Edgarian’s novel has literary award written on every page.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune “RISE THE EUPHRATES is an important, powerful, poignant novel. . . . Carol Edgarian’s prodigious talents as a storyteller, her ability to account what there was and was not for these Armenian Americans, should not be missed.” —Don Lee, Ploughshares “RISE THE EUPHRATES packs an emotional wallop.” —Elle “Where is Armenia today? . . . One could almost say that Armenia persists in Carol Edgarian’s prose.” —New York Times Book Review “A beautiful and generous book.” —Chicago Tribune “One of the summer’s Best Reads!” —Vogue “RISE THE EUPHRATES will draw any reader into Edgarian’s spell.” —Georgia Guardian “In Edgarian’s hands the novel becomes a richly woven tale spanning three generations of women.” —Hartford Advocate
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985180749/?tag=2022091-20
Edgarian, Carol Louise was born on April 29, 1962 in New Britain, Connecticut, United States. Daughter of Gerald Alex Edgarian and Barbara Elizabeth Carpenter.
Bachelor with honors, Stanford University, 1984.
She is known for her novels, Rise the Euphrates and Three Stages of Amazement. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English with High Honors from Stanford University in 1984. She moved to San Francisco soon after college and worked as a freelance copywriter, speechwriter, and Puerto Rico consultant for various high tech and retail companies, including Levi Strauss and the Mayfield Fund.
She entered the national literary scene with a high-profile debut novel Rise the Euphrates (1994).
In its review The Washington Post cited Rise the Euphrates as “a book whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity, and finally ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today—daring, heartbreaking, and affirmative, giving order and sense to our random lives.” The Miami Herald called the novel “a stunning debut” and Mademoiselle magazine called Edgarian’s writing “so good it can raise the hairs on your neck.” Secretariat in San Francisco in 2009 and at the start of the financial crisis, is both a love story and social chronicle of turbulent America. The novel reached the New York Times bestseller list in its first week of publication, O Magazine chose it as a Top Pick, and Indiebound selected it as a Pick of the Month.
Three Stages of Amazement was called “furiously compelling” by Janet Maslin at the New York Times, “superbly crafted, skillfully plotted” by The Washington Post, and “generous and graceful and true” by O Magazine. Among her other works of fiction and non-fiction is The Writer’s Life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame which she co-edited with Tom Jenks (Vintage).
Edgarian has also written for numerous publications including Vogue, Travel & Leisure, and West. In 2003 Edgarian co-founded Narrative Magazine.
(An international bestseller, now available in this twenti...)
(A modern-day Armenian-American girl, Seta Loon finds hers...)
(*A new edition of RISE THE EUPHRATES with an introduction...)
(20th)
Member International Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association.
Married Thomas Riley Jenks, August 21, 1993. 1 child, Lucy Honor Edgarian Jenks.