Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Writer
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
La Châtaigneraie, 2004
Writer and journalist
USA
Learn more about me :
I'm a writer living in Brooklyn, NY with my husband, Joe, and our 1-year-old son, Kian. After working jobs in journalism for about a decade - at Reuters, Al Jazeera, and most recently The Nation - I left my job to focus on writing my next book, which is about weird jurisdictions and places outside the law. It is very much inspired by Geneva and it's been a lot of fun to spend so much time thinking about a city I lived in for 18 years but, in so many ways, hardly knew.
The best Ecolint memories take place at Post café and regrettably aren't suitable for public consumption. But I had a wonderful time travelling to India in Year 10 with Mr. and Mrs. Harrison and I also have very fond memories of performing with my rock band, Downflower, at Pickwick's Pub.
Living in such an international community gave me a warped (in a good way!) sense of what was normal. It also made me dislike nationalism deeply. I've spent a lot of my career working on projects that challenge this ideology. My first book, The Cosmopolites, was an investigation into the global market for citizenship - basically a story about countries that sell their passports, and the people who buy them. The subtext is that citizenship can be pretty meaningless. I don't think I would have arrived at this topic without the international education I received at La Chât and the classmates I had from all around the world.
If I could do it all over again I'd probably take more time off of work and school to travel, and I'd stress less about college admissions.
My words of wisdom for Ecolint students: You live in a bubble. It's a really lovely bubble, but a bubble nonetheless. Remember that. People outside it will seem very strange to you at first, but you will get used to it.
Also, it's totally fine to work at an international organization or a bank, but you don't have to do it just because that's what everyone did around you growing up. Don't be boring.