HRAZTAN SARKIS ZEITLIAN PUBLICATIONS
SONA ZEITLIAN
(Biographical Notes)
Sona Zeitlian is an award winning educator and author with a long career of community activism and leadership in Cairo, Beirut, and Los Angeles. Her writings have focused on Armenian mythology and legends, folk tales based on the Armenian oral tradition, Armenian women’s intellectual history, the rights movement and current issues of Armenian women in the homeland and diaspora.
Sona Simonian-Zeitlian was born in Cairo, Egypt. She has studied social sciences
and psychology at the American University in Cairo and taught in community schools in Cairo and Beirut, and finally in Los Angeles since 1989. She has acted as senior editor of Los Angeles-based HSZ Publications. In 1995 she was nominated to the Advisory Board of Gustav E. Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA. She has been active in educational work and community service and is highly acclaimed for her lectures, panel discussions and seminars.
Her publications are The Role of Armenian Women During the War of Liberation (winner of the Cilician Catholicossate’s Melitinetsi Award), The Folktales of Musa Dagh (with illustration by Lucy Tutunjian), Legendary Armenian Braves (four volumes, with illustrations by Lucy Tutunjian), The One and Only (Armenian/English folktale, with illustration by Shushig Arslanian). She is currently preparing for publication an analysis of the two periods known as the golden ages of the Armenians in Egypt.
Sona has received awards in recognition of her career as educator and for her dedication to community service and far-reaching educational work for the Armenian Relief Society (ARS), Moreover, during the Lebanese civil war, she reached out to the women in the endangered zones to raise their morale and strengthen their resolve to persist in the defense of their quarters.
Sona married Sarkis Zeitlian, the Armenian national leader. The Zeitlians have four children. Sona currently lives and works in Los Angeles.