Victoria Melekian

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The Accidental Courage of Our Lives
by Victoria Melekian

ISBN: 978-1-962405-38-6
$16.00 (+ $4.63 US Shipping)

Also available as an Ebook from online retailers:
ISBN: 978-1-962405-39-3

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Victoria Melekian grew up in Los Angeles, and now lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California. She writes poetry, short fiction and, on occasion, a novella-in-flash. Her work has appeared in print and online and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She makes quilts, plants flowers, and practices Canon in D on the piano. For more, visit her website https://victoriamelekian.com

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Victoria Melekian’s poetry collection, The Accidental Courage of Our Lives, is rooted in everyday life: go to work, set the table, sweep the floor. She writes about the joys and struggles of family, the bumps and prickly parts, the illness and sorrow, but she also reminds us there are gorgeous surprises. We see a nest of baby finches on the front porch, but know there could be a cat lurking nearby. Ordinary isn’t always easy, and hope can be hard to hold onto, but sometimes we humans stumble into days that bloom, and sometimes we’re smart enough to notice. These poems capture the tangled, mossy mess of being alive.

ADVANCE PRAISE:

In The Accidental Courage of Our Lives, Victoria Melekian mines the quotidian moments of a life and unearths a vein of gold in poems that are at once transcendent and wise. “Work is hard and there’s too much of it,” she muses in the title poem, “and some days / there’s not enough of me left to spread on a cracker.” Equal parts lament and ode, these poems bear witness to what’s here, what’s gone, what never was, and what could be ––arriving just in time to maybe save us.

––Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math

The poems in The Accidental Courage of Our Lives stand at the edge of a wide vista, looking with a soft but unflinching gaze at the glorious expanse of a life. It’s a book that pays attention to small things, a lamentation and a celebration of all our beautiful hard-won contradictions: how to bury a dove in a shallow grave, the crunch of golden sun, how to survive a friend, and how poignant the view when faced with our own ending. Humming with tender maturity and hard-earned hope, Victoria Melekian invites us to remember, to marvel and wonder at the exquisite tragedy of being human.

––Nancy Stohlman, author of After the Rapture