I'm joined on the blog today by fellow writer @Naneh_V_H. We met recently at a writing event, and I was struck by her heart wrenching journey to creative writing: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD: A DIFFERENT ONE Although I was born in the 70s, mine was nothing like your imagined, Western experience of the decade. My native country of Armenia, to the south-east of European frontiers, was part of the Soviet Union then. One good thing about it was that by virtue of association, I’d say domination, alongside my native, Armenian language, I also learnt Russian, the lingua franca of the empire, and grew up bilingual as a result. I am proud of the fact that apart from reading centuries-old Armenian literature, I also studied Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov in the original. Being a bookish pupil, I wrote poems and essays in school - in Armenian and Russian - but I began writing in earnest as Arts and Culture Correspondent in the post-Soviet Armenian media; first, there w...