Nazeli “Ellie” Gregorian

Nazeli “Ellie” Gregorian is the protagonist of the novel Lavash at First Sight (2024). When the novel opens, she’s working at a tech company in the Bay Area and dating a male coworker, who dumps her right before an important presentation.

She came out as bi to her family when she was in college, at the insistence of her then-girlfriend. Her fourteen-year-old brother responded, “Ew. Whatever, I don’t care.” Her parents responded with “yelling, crossing themselves, tears, misquoting the Bible” but ultimately decided that keeping their relationship with her was the most important thing. As an adult, Nazeli considered that despite her parents’ religiosity, they ignored the church’s teachings and were more concerned about her as an individual and their relationship with her, to be remarkable and touching.

Despite her work deadlines, Nazeli helps her parents by going to Chicago for the Food and Beverage Packagers of America Conference, aka PakCon, where they hope to finalize a deal to expand the family business, Hagop’s Fine Armenian Foods. There, Nazeli meets Vanya Simonian — who describes herself as “bi, pan, somewhere in that zone” — but after their first date, they discover that their parents know each other. And neither approves of this relationship. Not because of their gender, but because their parents were once rivals.

For a while, Nazeli has a whirlwind romance with an aspiring children’s book author who works for her parents’ food company until some of Nazeli’s disparaging comments about Vanya’s family business go public. Though her efforts to make amends with Vanya are initially unsuccessful, Nazeli does manage to bring their parents back in touch. Despite their differences, they end up helping each other and becoming friends. In the end, Nazeli quits her job in tech to work for the family business, which her parents are excited about, and lets her redesign the company’s labels and branding. Vanya seeks her out, wanting to try again, and the two pick up where they left off.