David Kherdian

David Kherdian studied at University of Wisconsin System. The recorded working language is English and Armenian. George Gurdjieff and William Saroyan are recorded as an influence. Residence is recorded at McMinnville and San Francisco. Employment is recorded with Ararat Quarterly, California State University, Fresno and New Hampshire. Works named in the authority record are The Road from Home. Work by David Kherdian is recorded in the collections of Oregon Poetry Collection. Distinctions recorded are Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Newbery Honor and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.

• Born — 17 December 1931 • Birthplace — Racine, Wisconsin, United States • Occupation — * Novelist • poet • biographer • publisher • editor • Notable Works — Monkey: A Journey to the West David of Sassoun

Kherdian was born on December 17, 1931, in Racine, Wisconsin, to Veron Duhmejian and Melkon Kherdian, both survivors of the Armenian genocide. He dropped out of high school during the first semester of his junior year. After his service within the United States Army, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a B.S. degree in Philosophy. He married Nonny Hogrogian, an Armenian illustrator, in 1971. She died at the age of 92 from cancer on May 9, 2024 in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

The majority of his early poems were written over a period of one month, during his first visit to the Berkshires of Massachusetts in the summer of 1970. In the early 1970s, The Poets in Schools project was established, with Kherdian participating for New Hampshire. During this period, he published a series of three anthologies on contemporary American poetry with Macmillan: Visions of America: By the Poets of Our Time, Traveling America: With Today's Poets, and Settling America: The Ethnic Expression of 14 Contemporary American Poets. Kherdian won the 1979 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for children's non-fiction, and he was the only runner-up for the 1980 Newbery Medal, recognizing The Road from Home (1979), about the childhood of his mother Veron Dumehjian before and during the Armenian genocide. The book has been published in most European countries and in other countries including Japan. It has been reissued several times in the United States. The sequel, Finding Home (1981), describes her moving to the United States as a mail-order bride; it is sometimes cataloged as fiction. In 2017, he published Starting from San Francisco: A Life In Writing, in which he wrote about his school years.