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About Me

Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian is an Armenian-American queer woman by birth and a military historian by training. She is a staff writer for Unseen Japan, and the author of Grey Dawn: A Tale of Abolition and Union, which received the 2021 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite award. She hosts the podcast Friday Night History and co-hosts Cleyera: Conversations on Shinto.

She is proud to have called the American and Japanese northeasts her home. She has produced nonfiction, fiction, and photography content for more than a dozen publications, including two newspapers and five anthologies, as well as for Eisner Award-nominated author Magdalene Visaggio’s Kim & Kim. What’s her secret, you ask? Garlic and Turkish coffee (but really mostly Turkish coffee). Come say hi to her on Twitter, Twitch Patreon, and Facebook, at riversidewings

Recent Publications

Books:

• Grey Dawn (Balance of Seven Press, 2020)
• Confluence (Balance of Seven Press, 2022)

Publications:

• Author page at Unseen Japan
• “Chinode-matsuri,” in Ab Terra
• “All that Remains,” in Queers That Don’t Quit
• “The Lone Woman of Kokura,” in Nursing Clio
• “The Armenians of Pittsburgh,” in Queer Around the World
• “Shivers,” in Rogues: Before and Beyond
• “Grey Dawn Breaking,” in Rogues and Wild Fire
• “Mundane and Divine Intertwined,” in Gods and Radicals
• “First Light at Dawn,” in Queerly Loving, Vol. 1
• “Three Photographs,” in Inklette Magazine
• “In the Vale,” in Copperfield Review
• “Combat Artist: Finding Koike Chikyoku,” in Gutsy Broads
• “What Charley Longfellow Saw,” in Metropolis Japan
• “Sharpshooter, Educator, Nurse, Hero,” in Gutsy Broads

Podcast Appearances

• “Implosion,” Ep. 107 of Podcast 13
• “The Ninja Who Met James Buchanan,” on Outlaw History
• “Japanese History, the Civil War in Pennsylvania, and Writing Historically Based Fiction,” on Evoking History
• “Japanese-US Maritime Intersections in the 1860s,” Sea Control Ep. 163 from CIMSEC
• “The Shogunate Navy,” Preble Hall Episode 22
• “Shogun 2, The Last Samurai, and Western Misconceptions,” Ep. 109 of Lions Led by Donkeys

Public Lectures and Stage Shows

• “The Armenians of Pittsburgh” (WordPlay, 2017)
• “Get Your History the Anime Way” (Tekko 2018)
• “Animal-Person Caricatures” (Anthrocon 2019)
• “Grey Dawn” (WPAFW 2020)
• “Shunga” (WPAFW 2021)
• “Tohoku Krampus: Get to Know the Namahage of Northern Japan” (Anthrocon 2022)

Media Coverage

Twitter

riversidewings

Country Focus

Japan

Expertise by Geography

Japan, United States

Expertise by Chronology

3, 4, 5, 6

Expertise by Topic

American Civil War, Gender, Government, Military, Politics, Religion, Women