After studying at the Pedagogical University of Kirovakan and working in Yerevan as a proofreader, he gained literary fame in 1961 with his essay 'Ahnidzor'. His first collection of stories, 'Ogostos' (August), was published in 1967. Matevosyan served as the head of the Writers' Union of Armenia from 1995 to 2000.

Armenian writer and prose author. His preferred genre is the novella. His work has been published since 1960. He has written the novellas We Are Our Mountains, Pack Horses (Оранжевый табун, The Orange Herd), Hangover (Похмелье), Tashkent, and Autumn Sun (Мать едет женить сына, Mother Goes to Marry Off Her Son), the cinematic novella The Lord, as well as short stories and plays. Since 1967, these works have appeared in various collections and have been repeatedly published in Armenian, Russian, and subsequently in nearly all the languages of the Soviet republics and the socialist countries. Moscow’s Progress Publishers issued a collection entitled The Orange Herd in Urdu and English. In 1994, the Paris publisher Albin Michel published a selection of Hrant Matevossian’s works under the title Autumn Sun.

The films We Are Our Mountains, Autumn Sun, The Lord, and This Green and Red World were made from Hrant Matevossian’s screenplays; the film August was based on his works. His essay Metsamor and his play The Neutral Zone were adapted for television, while Autumn Sun and The Station were staged at the Yerevan Drama Theatre. He is alive and is working on the extensive work The Lord, the novella Along the Edge, and the novel Merelaluys (Рассеянный свет — Diffuse Light). He has been President of the Writers’ Union of Armenia since 1996. Born in 1935 in Ahnidzor, a small village in northern Armenia, in the Alaverdi–Tumanyan district. He has lived in Yerevan since 1952: he worked in printing houses and newspaper editorial offices, studied in the Department of History and Philology at the Yerevan Pedagogical Institute, and attended screenwriting courses in Moscow in 1965–1966. In 1984, he received the USSR State Prize for Literature and the corresponding Armenian State Prize; in 1996, he was awarded the Order of Mesrop Mashtots of the Republic of Armenia.

Family — wife, daughter, son, and, so far, three granddaughters.

January 2001, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia

The account above covers almost all of Hrant Matevossian’s biography. There are, of course, more detailed and comprehensive versions, and the writer’s biography continues even now, after his death. We nevertheless felt it was important to present this version to you as it stands, in the author’s own style.