With Fearcatcher, Naira Kuzmich’s posthumous novel, we get a glimpse of the sublime— and are left to wonder what more she would have written. 

Naira Kuzmich, now eight years gone, will have her debut novel published this October, and her voice and point of view feel both fresh and timeless. Lush, mythic and startlingly intimate, Fearcatcher sorts the perpetual questions of fear and fate as protagonist Ruzan Garsevanian tries to forge a middle path between freedom and destiny.

On the heels of Kuzmich’s lauded short story collection, In Everything I See Your Hand (Library Journal called it a “broodingly beautiful collection”), the University of New Orleans Press will publish Kuzmich’s debut novel, Fearcatcher, in October 2025. 

Set in 1970s and 1980s Soviet Armenia, Fearcatcher is a richly crafted coming-of-age narrative that encompasses themes of magic, inheritance and desire in a story that feels both monumental and personal, set in an Armenia hurtling toward its independence. 

Aram Mrjoian, editor of the recent anthology We Are All Armenian, says that “Naira Kuzmich is the rare writer whose technical mastery and ineffable magic soar together on the page to create unforgettable works. In this superb novel, Kuzmich deftly weaves an epic story of what holds together family and identity, the boundless ways we both run from and toward the ones we love. Fearcatcher is a new cornerstone of Armenian-American literature.”

Naira Kuzmich (b. 1988) was born in Armenia and raised in the Los Angeles enclave of Little Armenia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in West Branch, Blackbird, Ecotone, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Cincinnati Review and others. She passed away in 2017 from lung cancer. 

For more information, please contact: Chelsey Shannon, editor, at ckshann1@uno.edu  

Guest contributions to the Armenian Weekly are informative articles or press releases written and submitted by members of the community.