Alex Vartan Gubbins was born in Chicago and raised in Wisconsin, has a BA in African Languages and Literature from University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA from Northern Michigan University. He was the recipient of the 2014 Witter Bynner Translation Grant and a finalist in the Iowa Review’s 2014 Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award and the North American Review’s 2015 James Hearst Poetry Prize. Some of his recent works have been published in Split Rock Review, The Tishman Review, By & By Poetry, Bird’s Thumb, Diode (translation), and Asymptote (translation). He taught English and Poetry in Qatar for two years (2014-2016) and is now finding great inspiration in Armenia.