| Nona Balakian | |
| Birth Date: | September 4, 1918 |
| Birth Place: | Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey) |
| Death Place: | New York City, United States |
| Occupation: | Literary Critic |
| Nationality: | Armenian-American |
| Relatives: | Grigoris Balakian (granduncle) Anna Balakian (sister) Peter Balakian (nephew) |
| Known For: | Editor at the New York Times Sunday Book Review, founder of the National Book Critics Circle |
| Signature: | Nona Balakian signature.jpg |
Nona Balakian (Armenian: Նոնա Պալագեան; September 4, 1918, in Constantinople – April 5, 1991, in New York City) was a literary critic and an editor at the New York Times Sunday Book Review.[1] She served on the Pulitzer Prize committee and was a board member of the Authors Guild and the Pen Club as well as a founder of the National Book Critics Circle, whose Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is named for her.[2] [3]
Balakian immigrated to New York as a child. She graduated from Barnard College and received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied with the literary critic Lionel Trilling, in 1943.[4] She joined the New York Times Book Review that same year and remained a staff member for 43 years, retiring in 1987.
She and her sister, Anna Balakian, a literary critic and professor at New York University who died in 1997, were members of a literary circle that also included the playwright William Saroyan and the diarist Anaïs Nin.[5] In 1981 Nona Balakian won Rockefeller Grant for her work on William Saroyan.[6] [7] The Balakian sisters were the grandnieces of the archbishop and Armenian genocide survivor Grigoris Balakian and the aunts of the poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian.[8]