author

A. G. (Apraham Garabed) Seklemian

1864–1920

An Armenian writer, pastor, and folklorist who helped carry traditional stories from village life into print. Best known for The Golden Maiden, he preserved folk tales that still open a window onto Armenian culture and imagination.

1 Audiobook

About the author

A. G. Seklemian, also known as Apraham Garabed Seklemian, was an Armenian author remembered chiefly for collecting and publishing Armenian folk tales in English. His best-known book, The Golden Maiden, and Other Folk Tales and Fairy Stories Told in Armenia (1898), helped introduce these stories to a wider readership and remains the work most closely associated with his name.

Available historical references also describe him as a pastor, scholar, and folklorist. He was born in 1864 in Bitias, a village in the Musa Dagh region of the Ottoman Empire, and later emigrated to the United States. In Fresno, California, he became one of the founders and the first editor of Asbarez, the Armenian-American newspaper established in 1908.

Seklemian's life connected literature, faith, and public life. Alongside his work in print culture and community journalism, his writing preserved oral storytelling traditions that might otherwise have been lost, giving later readers a vivid sense of Armenian legend, wonder, and everyday memory.