Raffi Joe Wartanian is a writer, musician, and educator who teaches writing at UCLA and currently serves as the inaugural Poet Laureate in the City of Glendale, California. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, University of Texas Press, Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, Lapham’s Quarterly, Outside Magazine, and elsewhere; and his poetry has appeared in The Los Angeles Press, No Dear Magazine, The Poetry Lighthouse, LAdige, Ararat Magazine, and beyond. Raffi has taught writing to veterans at the Manhattan VA, incarcerated writers at Rikers Island, youth in Armenia, and undergraduates at Columbia University, where he earned an MFA in Writing. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from The Fulbright Program, Eurasia Partnership Foundation, and Humanity in Action. For Pacific Standard Time ART, Raffi collaborated with creative technologists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on “Earth Speaks,” an interactive poetry installation contributed to the group showcase Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination on exhibit at the Brand Library & Art Center from September 2024 to January 2025.
A multi-instrumentalist, composer, lyricist, and singer-songwriter, Raffi has performed internationally and released two full-length albums of original music. His latest work of instrumental compositions, Critical Distance (2019), has been described as “absolutely fresh,” “poignant,” and “sophisticated,” catching the ear of Oscilloscope Laboratories who tapped Raffi to compose film trailer music for the indie hit “The Tale of King Crab.” In 2023, tracks from Critical Distance were used to soundtrack a production of William Saroyan’s Pulitzer-winning drama “The Time Of Your Life” (dir. Jennifer Chang) staged by the UCLA Department of Theater. Live, Raffi has shared the stage with the likes of Future Islands, Amir ElSaffar, and Kelly Bell Band. He has also performed on stage and in the studio with Grammy Award-winners Mary Youngblood and MB Gordy, along with writing music and lyrics for vocalist Eileen Khatchadourian, who performed Raffi’s compositions in London, Berlin, Istanbul, and Beirut.
Raffi is the proud grandson and great-grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors, the son of Armenian parents from Lebanon, and, with his siblings, the first generation in his family to be born in the United States, in the great city of Baltimore. Raffi founded Letters for Peace in 2017, and currently serves on the advisory board of the International Armenian Literary Alliance.
