SLO local Tenny Arlen was a young woman with a bright future. The 2009 SLO High graduate studied at Cuesta College from 2009-11, where she won first place in both the fiction and poetry categories of the 2011 Tellus Literary Journal Contest. She graduated from UCLA in 2013 with a B.A. in Comparative Literature (French and Armenian) and a minor in Armenian studies. Sadly, before beginning her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she died in a car accident in 2015.
In 2021, her debut book of poetry, To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here? was published posthumously. A new bilingual edition was just released on Oct. 30, featuring her poems in both English and Armenian, and SLOMA is hosting a poetry reading on Thursday, Dec. 18 (5:30 to 7 p.m.; free, reserve a spot at eventbrite.com).
The bilingual edition was co-translated by the late author and her brother, Jesse S. Arlen, Ph.D. It also includes an “afterword by UCLA Western Armenian professor Hagop Gulludjian, in which he reflects upon Tenny’s creative journey—from being a new learner of the language to her remarkable achievement of having produced the first full-length work of creative literature written in Armenian by an American-born writer,” organizers announced. ∆
This article appears in Dec 11-18, 2025.