A lover of music, chocolate, and altruistic sarcasm, Garinè Boyajian Isassi is a recovering journalist and the author of the award–winning novel Start with the Backbeat. Additional published work includes the weekly humor column, Mom in the Middle; the anthologies, This is What America Looks Like (2021) and Grace in Love (2023); and a variety of online publications. In 2022, she won a grant from the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County and was accepted into the George Washington University JMM Writing Workshop. In 2024, she was selected as an International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) mentee. She is proud of her Armenian American heritage, and often draws upon that experience in her work.
Garinè is the Gaithersburg Book Festival Workshops Chair and a former member of the Washington Writers Conference organizing committee. In her day job, she is a strategic communications professional with specialties in events planning, business writing/editing, and project management.
She is also a singer/songwriter who grew up with one foot in Texas and the other in New Jersey. She posts her songs on soundcloud and is currently the lead singer in the cover band 909. She writes when everyone else is asleep.
Click Here to hear how you pronounce the name, Garinè Isassi
Read the full story of Garinè‘s first name – what the ‘eh’?!
Some Songs by Garinè:
Garinè THE Writer 