This month, Armenian people around the world are marking 100 years since the genocide that nearly wiped out their culture during World War 1. As the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks. It's a painful history that's also personal for two Vermont writers: Chris Bohjalian and Dana Walrath. On the next Vermont Edition, they join us to discuss the legacy of the Armenian genocide, an event that Bohjalian calls "the slaughter you know next to nothing about." Bohjalian's historical novel The Sandcastle Girls tells the story of an American woman who volunteers as nurse in modern-day Syria to treat Armenian refugees during the genocide in 1915. Walrath's novel-in-verse, Like Water on Stone borrows a sliver of family history to describe the escape of three children from the genocide after their parents are killed.
Broadcast live on Thursday, April 2, 2015 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
