We have over the years of running the Bosphorus Review of Books had some amazing talent. We have created this master list to help you lovely people find more works by the writers that you love.
Millicent Borges Accardi
Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry books, most recently Only More So (Salmon Poetry). Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California Arts Council, The Corporation of Yaddo, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation. She lives in the hippie enclave of Topanga, CA and recent work is in Laurel Review, Mantis, Quiddity and The Journal.
Gale Acuff
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. She has also authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). She has also taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.
Alaz Ada
Alaz Ada is a student of the social sciences from Istanbul currently studying in Southern France at the Menton campus of Sciences Po Paris. Her poetry has been published most recently in Selfish Magazine and is due to appear in the upcoming digital issue of FishFood Magazine. Her political essays appear in a regular column in her campus' newspaper, Le Zadig.
Peter Mark Adams
Peter Mark Adams is a long-term resident of Istanbul (Asian side!) and a professional author specialising in landscape, myth and esoterica. Published works include: Mystai (Scarlet Imprint, 2019); A Guide to the Sola-Busca Tarocchi (Scarlet Imprint, 2017); The Game of Saturn (Scarlet Imprint, 2017); The Healing Field (Balboa Press, 2014); Altered States/Parallel Worlds (Ceres Yayinlari, 2011). Shorter literary pieces and poems have appeared in Reliquiae, a literary journal specialising in landscape, nature and mythology. A review of a poetry collection, Autumn Richardson’s ‘An Almost-Gone Radiance’ has appeared on Abegail Morley’s ‘The Poetry Shed’; and a range of spooky essays in the peer-reviewed journals Paranthropology and The Journal of Exceptional Experience & Psychology.
Mudabbir Ahmad
Someone once told me that while writing about yourself, be modest- I can do nothing but be modest as I write about myself, because I have done nothing of significance. Anyways, I have a Masters degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Kashmir University. I work for a local magazine as a reporter (sometimes). I like reading and photography, but most of all I like films (passionately). And I almost forgot, I write too. Read more of my work on my personal blog at- https://otherthingsmissing.wordpress.com/
Ahmed al-Hassan
Ahmed al-Hassan is a poet, short story writer, graphic designer, photographer and high school student originally from Syria. Currently living in Istanbul, Ahmed aspires to get his works published and to improve and gain new skills. He started reading and writing poems in 2016 as a solace and a way to express himself.
Joe Albanese
Joe Albanese is a writer from South Jersey. His work can be found in publications across the U.S. and in ten other countries. He is the author of Benevolent King, Caina, Smash and Grab, Candy Apple Red, For the Blood is the Life, and a poetry collection, Cocktails with a Dead Man.
Sobia Ali
Sobia Ali is from India. She has Masters in English Literature. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, The Punch Magazine, The Indian Quarterly, ActiveMuse, Ombak Magazine, Literary Yard and is forthcoming in Gone Lawn. She is currently working on her first novel.
Moujan Ardani
Moujan Ardani is an Iranian native writer. She has attended many creative writing workshops due to her desire and love of writing. She worked as a freelance journalist in Iran and her short stories were published in some Iranian magazines.
This story which won the “Bahram Sadeghi” award which is a prestigious literary award in Iran, has been translated from Farsi to English.
Junaid Ashraf
Junaid Ashraf is a student from Kashmir. He has done his post-graduate studies in economics. He is currently pursuing his masters in English literature. He has written opinion pieces, fiction and poetry for various newspapers and literary magazines. Research, writing poetry and fiction are his main interests. Besides that, he is a sports enthusiast and likes playing football, cricket and skiing. Political activism is his passion.
Faḍīlah al-Shābbī
Faḍīlah al-Shābbī has been a leading literary figure in Tunisia since the 1970’s. The author of more than a dozen collections of poetry, multiple volumes of children’s literature, a collection of short stories, and four novels, she is also, notably, the cousin of poet Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī (d.1934), whose “Irādat al-ḥayat” (“The Will to Live”), originally associated with the struggle for independence from colonial rule, quickly became the revolutionary anthem throughout the Arab world when the protests began in 2010. The poem’s first lines were chanted in protests in Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and beyond. Chabbi herself has said, “I inherited the poetic spirit from this great poet....I promised myself that I would complete Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī’s message...that I would continue it, though in a different way” (Interview). True to her intention, she addresses the theme of political injustice in a distinct voice appropriate to the particular kinds of oppression endemic to her contemporary environment. The novel from which this excerpt is taken, Justice (al-‘Adl), is part of a trilogy of political fiction. Written in 2005, Justice was banned for three years by Ben ‘Ali’s government before it was available to the public. It is a merciless political invective that often targets both the State’s symbolic strategies of surveillance and its failure to bring justice to its people. Veiled only by its use of direct allegory taken from traditional modes of storytelling, it merges the literal and the symbolic, poetry and prose, the personal and the collective, metaphysical discourse and satirical lampoon in an episodic narrative with a recurring protagonist. Within this variegated framework, Chabbi accentuates the dark absurdity of living under an authoritarian regime and the necessity of the individual struggle for justice and autonomy regardless.
While her poetry has occasionally appeared in translation in literary anthologies (for example, in Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four, The University of California Book of North African Literature, 2012), this is the first translation of her fiction. Though the intense campaign of civil resistance waged by the Tunisian people in the middle of December of 2010 was triggered by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, Ben Ali’s repressive twenty-three year rule was not free of local acts of defiance, often sublimated into literary texts that chipped away at the State’s hold on the imaginative capacities of the people. Chabbi’s political fiction is an important example, not only of this type of political dissent, but of women’s participation as political actors who contested the strategies of domination executed by the State before the Arab Spring. In recognition of Chabbi’s contribution to Tunisian literature, a collection of her complete works was recently published in five volumes by Dār Muḥammad ‘Alī li-l-nashr in November of 2013.
Filiz Akın
Filiz Akin, was born in Germany, but has a Turkish background. She received an academic degree in International Finance, despite all the problems for immigrants in Germany. While working as a Banker in Zurich she has focused on acting, writing and speaking. The last 3 years in Istanbul, she has had a number of small roles in Turkish movies.
Yasmin Ahmed
Anas Alnajjar
Amirah Al Wassif
Rahil Asif
Rahil Asif is a poet, essayist and travel writer from New Delhi, India. He has professional experience as a content analyst with an Australian firm and is also a post-graduate in English literature. He has been penning poetry, which talks about realization, for more than 5 years under the concept of “the 21st hour”. Both the published poems fall under “The 21st Hour” Concept. Follow him at www.the21sthour.com
Abdal Aşık
Abdal Aşık was born in the historic town of Tarsus in his grandparents’ living room. He now lives in Salt Lake City/Utah with his beloved and their dog Sophie where he writes the poems of beauty with his love pen as it has been ordered by his soul! His poetry is influenced by Anatolian culture, traditional ballads and the profound humanism of his grandmother.
Iljas Baker
Iljas Baker was born in Scotland and studied at the universities of Strathclyde, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. He currently lives in Nonthaburi, Thailand and teaches at Mahidol University International College in the Division of Social Science. He writes poems, essays and book reviews usually on Islamic themes and is also an editorial consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Baki
Baki (alternatively spelled Baqi) is the pen name of the Ottoman Turkish poet Mahmud Abdülbaki. One of the greatest lyric poets in the Ottoman Turkish poetic tradition, in his lifetime he earned the sobriquet Sultânüş-şuarâ(سلطان الشعرا) or the “Sultan of poets.” In addition to his poetry, as a religious scholar he held a number of positions, usually that of qadi, in the Ottoman bureaucracy and even unsuccessfully aspired for the position of şeyhülislam (شيخ الإسلام). In addition to his ghazals, he is well known for the elegy he wrote upon the death of his benefactor, Kanunî Sultan Süleyman (Suleiman the Magnificent), which is considered to be his masterpiece.
Tanja Bakıć
Tanja Bakić, born in 1981 in Montenegro, is the author of four highly-praised poetry collections, her debut being published when she was only 15, and the last one, Sjeme i druge pjesme (The Seed and Other Poems), in 2013. She is also a translator, has an MA in English language and literature, and also writes as a music and literary critic. Her poetry has been translated into 15 foreign languages, presented at festivals abroad, published in international magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded fellowships several times, including Central European Initiative Fellowship for Writers Award (Vilenica Festival Slovenia), International Haus Des Autoren Graz, Slovenian Public Fund for Cultural Activities, etc. The lecture she presented at the Tate Britain in London, entitled “William Blake in the Former Yugoslavia” will be published by Bloomsbury in 2019. Her poetry translations include the works of William Blake, Yeats, Byron, Eliot… and most recently Don Paterson.
Aysel K. Basci
Lydia Beardmore
Lydia Beardmore is writer and photographer currently based in London where she studies Anthropology of Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage at SOAS. She lived in Istanbul for a number of years and considers it her true home. She has written for a variety of publications including ReOrient, Time Out Istanbul and Little White Lies and hosts spoken word events and creative writing workshops across Europe. She also runs a female focused travel writing blog which can be found at www.puddingshoppress.com
Andrew Bell
Eric Beyer
Eric James Beyer is an Istanbul-based writer and the founder of twostoriestall.com. His work has been featured in various digital and print publications, such as The Guide Istanbul, Lunar Poetry, Bianet, Yabangee, and more. He is currently working on publishing his first novel.
Omair Bhat
Omair Bhat is a Kashmiri poet writing in the English language. He has been formerly published, among others, by the London- based Critical Muslim, Sunflower Collective, Cafe Dissensus and Kashmir Lit.
Lüsan Bıçakçı
Lüsan Bıçakçı was born in 1968 in Adıyaman and moved to Istanbul with her family in 1972. She graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering at Istanbul Technical University in 1989 and obtained her master's degree from the same university in 1992. She worked as an engineer for Turkish Airlines from 1990 to 2014. She has published two books of poetry: Bana Sözlerin Kaldı (Hera, 2001) and Dilsiz ve Ağır (Artshop, 2012). She participated in the Armenian Writers Composing in Foreign Languages Conferences held by the Armenian Writers Union in Yerevan in 2013 and 2017. Some of her poems have been translated into Armenian and published in Armenia. She is married and has two children.
Dan Bloom
Judith Blumburg
Judith Blumberg is a student currently based in London and fell in love with Turkey during her Erasmus year in Istanbul. She is an author and editor at MAVIBLAU, a German-language online magazine which is based in Istanbul and deals with stories, events and encounters between Turkey and the German-speaking world in the field of art, culture and society.
Ace Boggess
Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field(Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Çağla Bölek
Çağla was born and based in Istanbul, from where she produces creative work in painting, photography, poetry and art writing while organizing arts events and studying English Literature and Art Management at Yeditepe University. Her first group exhibition, "Creased or Cramped; an Experimentation in Interplanetary Poetry" took place in June 2018 at KargART. She publishes art-related articles at Yabangee.com and produces visual and performance poetry examining the moments in which reality bends and where our authenticity occurs. She defends our playful divinity.
Without A Subject Human
Zachary Bos
Zachary Bos is editor of The New England Review of Books, nerobooks.org, and publisher of Pen & Anvil Press. An alumnus of the graduate poetry workshops at Boston University, his work as a writer and translator has appeared in Fulcrum, The Christian Science Monitor, Elsewhere, Lotus-Eater, The Battersea Review, Fallujah, Public Pool, Written River, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. He can be found on Twitter as @zakbos.
Rachel Bradley
Rachel is a teacher and writer living in Istanbul
Ryan Brennan
Ryan made the mistake of studying philosophy. He has many questions and few answers. He once asked a seagull what it was passionate about. It squawked, snatched his lahmacun and flew away.
R. Bremner
R. Bremner writes of incense, peppermints, and the color of time in such venues as International Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Climate of Change (Sigmund Freud in Poetry). He invites you to visit his Instagram poetry at beat_poet1 and Absurdist_poet for milk and cookies.
John Casquerelli
John Casquarelli is the author of two full-length collections: On Equilibrium of Song (Overpass Books, 2011) and Lavender (Authorspress, 2014). He is an Instructor of Academic Writing at Koç Üniversitesi in Istanbul. John is also a Poetry Editor for a New York City journal, StatORec. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Long Island University—Brooklyn. He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for Poetry, 2016 Kafka Residency Prize in Hostka, Czech Republic, and a 2017 residency at the Writer’s Room of The Betsy Hotel on South Beach. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Teaching as a Human Experience (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Pilgrimage Magazine, Suisun Valley Review, Expound Magazine, Peacock Journal, The Poetry Mail/RaedLeaf Foundation for Poetry and Allied Arts, Marathon Literary Review, Black Earth Institute, and Boarder Senses.
Charlie Brice
Charlie Brice is a retired psychoanalyst living in Pittsburgh. He has authored two full length poetry collections: Flashcuts Out of Chaos (WordTech Editions, 2016) and Mnemosyne's Hand (WordTech Editions, 2018). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, The Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, The Dunes Review, SLAB, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Sport Literate, The Paterson Literary Review, Plainsong, and elsewhere.
Alba Brunetti
Alba Brunetti is a writer, editor and coach currently based in New York. She lived in Istanbul in for six years and considers it home.
Santiago Brusadin
Santiago Brusadin is an Istanbul based Msc. Architect and freelance writer from Barcelona. He has worked in Architecture offices in Spain, Poland, Italy and Turkey. He is passionate about design, travelling around the globe and discovering the off-the-beaten-path wonders of the cities. He currently writes about hidden architectural gems, contemporary design and the peculiarities of life in Istanbul for Yabangee and he has been a writer contributor for the English Time Out Istanbul magazine
Nora Byrne
Nora is an artist, writer and educator who has lived in Istanbul for two years. She began writing creative nonfiction after moving abroad, as a response to new and familiar elements of the urban experience.
Rokaya Chaarani
Rokaya Chaarani is a Moroccon poetess. She is pursuing a master degree in the field of Gender Studies. Film, literature and the arts in general inspire her everyday to turn her own experiences into a piece of art.
Yola M. Caecenary
João Cerqueira
João Cerqueirais is the author of eight books.
The Tragedy of Fidel Castro won the USA Best Book Awards 2013, the Beverly Hills Book Awards 2014, the Global Ebook Awards 2014, was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal 2014 and for The Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards 2014 and was considered by ForewordReviews the third best translation published in 2012 in the United States. Besides the US, it was published in Italy by Leone Editore, in the UK by Freight Books in Spain by Funambulista and Argentina by Eduvim.
Pasithea Chan
Pasithea is a budding Lebanese Filipino impressionist who enjoys writing poetry in symbolism laced with philosophy and psychology. She writes in various styles but prefers pieces that have double meanings to allow a reader to delve deeper into her works.
Pasithea has been featured in several magazines and anthologies including: Envision Arts, Rigorous, Fevers of the Mind, Osprey’s Empire, Voices of the Real and Suicide.
Gareth Chantler
Gareth Chantler is a Canadian writer based in Gaziantep. He runs www.storiesfromsyria.com, focusing on first person interviews with Syrians in Turkey.
Jean Jacques Charles
Jean Charles is a Lawyer, Country Risk/Energy Analyst and Writer from Queens, New York. He has worked in Madagascar, Morocco, Egypt, and Scotland. He currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey.
Greg Chatterton
Greg Chatterton is an essayist and writer of fiction who is currently researching his philosophy and literature Master’s thesis focusing on the works of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He visited Istanbul in 2017 with his wife and fell in love with the city.
Isra Cheema
Isra Cheema is a Muslim American Pakistani woman who was born and raised in the heart of Oklahoma. She graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Education. Her passion for making a difference in students’ lives by providing them with different perspectives fuels her love for teaching. Isra also considers herself a lifelong student of knowledge, and aims to better herself as an individual by learning everything she can about her faith. When she’s not reading anything she can get her hands on, she enjoys studying and teaching Arabic, swimming, traveling, and spending time with those she loves. She currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey, where she is continuing her study of Arabic and Islamic sciences.
Bruce Colbert
Bruce Colbert is an ex-Navy officer, actor, filmmaker and author of five books. He divides his time between New York and the Gulf Coast of Alabama.
Yağmur Coşkun
Vincent Czyz
Vincent Czyz received an MA in comparative literature from Columbia University and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University. He is the author of the collection Adrift in a Vanishing City, which won the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for Best in Small Press, and the recipient of the 1994 W. Faulkner-W. Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction as well as two fiction fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts. The 2011 Truman Capote Fellow at Rutgers University, he has placed stories and essays in New England Review, Shenandoah, AGNI, The Massachusetts Review, Tampa Review, Tin House, Quiddity, Georgetown Review, Louisiana Literature, Boston Review, Sports Illustrated, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. A resident of Istanbul, Turkey for some eight years, he now teaches creative writing at The College of New Jersey and lives with his wife, Neslihan, and son, Rainier, in Jersey City, NJ.
Malek Daghestani
Ryan Davidson
Ryan J. Davidson’s first book, Under What Stars, was published in 2009 by Ampersand Books. He is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Balamand in the North of Lebanon, which is one of the first universities in the Levant region to offer an undergraduate degree in English literature with a concentration in creative writing.
Alexander Dawe
Alexander Dawe has translated many contemporary Turkish novels, including Endgame by Ahmet Altan and Women Who Blow on Knots by Ece Temelkuran. In collaboration with Maureen Freely he has translated A Useless Man by Sait Faik Abasıyanık, The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, which received the MLA Lois Roth Award, and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali. In 2010, he received a PEN/Heim translation Fund grant to translate the short stories of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. He lives and works on one of the Prince’s Islands in Istanbul.
Batuhan Dedde
Batuhan Dedde was born in Istanbul in 1987. He has published several books, including the poetry collection Morfinsiz Çekilen Düş Sancıları, in 2013. His work brings together the sensibilities of the American Beats and the Turkish Second New.
Cris de Oliveira
Cris de Oliveira is a writer and editor living in Istanbul. You can read more of her work at criswritesit.tumblr.com.
Cat Dixon
Cat Dixon is the author of EVA and TOO HEAVY TO CARRY (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and her chapbook, THE BOOK OF LEVINSON, was published in July 2017 by Finishing Line Press. She teaches creative writing part-time at the University of Nebraska. She has poems (co-written with Trent Walters) in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).
William Doreski
William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in various journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson,Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His new poetry collection is A Black River, A Dark Fall.
Aakash Dharma
Aakash Dharma is an amateur poet, actor and photographer and has been trying his luck with the guitar for a few months. Owing to his keen interest in psychology, he aims to seek and understand the beauty on both sides of the coin. His poetry, as a result, is often an assemblage of oxymorons highlighting the contradictory nature of our being and the world we live in.
Moinak Dutta
Moinak Dutta has been writing poems and stories since his school days. Many of his poems and stories have been published in Indian and international anthologies and magazines s well as dailies such as ‘The Madras Courier’, 'The Statesman' (Kolkata edition), and 'The World Peace Poetry anthology' ( United Nations). His first full length English work ‘Online@Offline’' was published in 2014 by Lifi Publications. His second work,'In search of la Radice' was published in 2017 by Xpress Publications. He has also worked as an editor of the poetry collection, 'Whispering Poeisis', published in 2018 by Poeisis. www.moinakdutta. wordspress.com.
Çınar Ekiz
Çınar Ekiz writes poems and haikus which have been published in many Turkish literary journals, including Peyniraltı Literary Journal, The Lacivert Journal of Tales and Poems, and Akatalpa. Further to this, he has a published novel called Cats are Like the Blues.
Ibrahim El-Kazaz
Erica Eller
Erica Eller is a teacher and a sustainability writer. She was the non-fiction editor of the Bosphorus Review of Books.
On Erich Auerbach in Istanbul: An interview with Dr. Geoffrey Green
On Preparing Personal Archives for Public Use: An interview with Nurcin Ileri of the Bogazici Archives
Craig Epplin
Craig Epplin is a writer and professor who lives in Portland, Oregon, United States.
David Estingel
David Estringel is a writer, poet, and author, as well as Poetry Editor at Fishbowl Press and The Elixir Magazine, as well as Fiction Editor at Red Fez. His work has been accepted and/or published at Terror House Magazine, 50 Haikus, Setu, The Elixir, Soft Cartel, Harbinger Asylum, Former People Journal, Cephalopress, Merak Magazine, Printed Words, Digging through the Fat, Haiku Journal, Foxhole Magazine, The Basil O’Flaherty, Three Line Poetry, Agony Opera, Alien Buddha Press, Synchronized Chaos, The @baffled Haiku Daily, The Blue Nib, Fishbowl Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, and more. David first feature-length collection of poetry and prose Indelible Fingerprints (Alien Buddha Press) was published in April 2019.
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Los Angeles poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Diode, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s the author of five published poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. She’s been published in over 60 anthologies, including the best-selling Nasty Women Poets (Lost House Press, 2017) and Antologia di poesia femminile americana contemporanea, (Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, 2018). Her photographs are published worldwide. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com
Wendy J. Fox
Wendy J. Fox is the author of The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories, and the novels The Pull of It and If The Ice Had Held (forthcoming). She has published widely in literary journals and online magazines. More at www.wendyjfox.com or @wendyjeanfox.
Vincent Francone
Luke Frostick
Luke is the editor of the Bosphorus Review of Books.
BROB Interviews the BROB (Part Deux): Poetry Guy Liam Murray
Review: The Route Of Dor Nassia and Other Stories, Emir Raz Funes
What Makes Travel Literature? A conversation with Barnaby Rogerson, editor of Eland
On Erdoğan's Past and Turkey's Future: A conversation with Soner Çağaptay
The Bosphorus Review Translators Panel: Three translators in conversation at the Istanbul Literature Festival.
Seeing Istanbul From Below: An interview with Burhan Sonmez.
Talking Ottomans: An interview with Chirs Gratein of the Ottoman History Podcast
On Iran, Reorient and Yaşar Kemal: An interview with Joobin Bekhrad
One Year at The Bosphorus Review of Books: A conversation between Thomas Parker, Erica Eller and Luke Frostick
From Banking to Literature: An interview with Selçuk Altun
Queen Elisabeth Tudor and the Muslim World: A conversation with Jerry Brotton
Turkey's Agent int.
New Perspectives on Byzantium: An Interview with Professor John Haldon
Why You Should Read: Galata, Pera, Beyoğlu: A Biography, Brendan Freely and John Freely
Why You Should Read: Saga, Brian K. Vaughan, artist Fiona Staples
Shala Gafary
Shala Gafary is a Blossom Hill legal fellow based in Istanbul, where she provides legal assistance to asylum seekers. Prior to her time in Turkey, Shala was in Athens and Lesvos, Greece where she assisted asylum seekers with the applications before the EU. Her international experience includes human rights work in Bosnia and Herzegovina and anti-poverty projects in Guatemala and Costa Rica. A long-time advocate for marginalized communities, Shala has worked on a number of projects in New York City serving youth, and representing criminal defendants and undocumented Americans. Shala obtained her B.A. in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from NYU and her J.D. from Cardozo School of Law. You can follow her on Twitter @shalagafary.
Kelly Pınar Goodwin
Paz Griot
Paz Griot is a spoken word poet, visual artist, actor, playwright, and performer originally from New York City. He now lives in Istanbul. He has written and published several poems, performed in countless plays and open mic events, written seven plays and exhibited his paintings, collages, and sculptures in six gallery shows in New York. He is currently writing his eighth play, and is launching a Zen meditation group.
Evan Guilford-Blake
Ron Edward Masikip Ingalla
Ron's style has been described mostly as imagistic, yet sonorous, as "subconscious explorations of the obscure," with a a seeming re-presentation, of the Ineffable, of the supposed reified word.
Hailing from the street and beat of Berkeley, California, this heady, pseudo-esoteric, new approach to literary style, a modern-archaic, attempts at freeing up the preconceptions of the word, with a retroactive, yet futuristic vision, of the unsaid mechanics of
literary cultures.
Khanh Ha
Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh (Black Heron Press) and The Demon Who Peddled Longing (Underground Voices). He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, a Best Indie Lit New England nominee, finalist to Mary McCarthy Prize (Sarabande Books), Many Voices Project (New Rivers Press), Prairie Schooner Book Prize (Prairie Schooner), a twice finalist of The William Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Award, the recipient of SAND HILLS PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION, and Greensboro Review’s ROBERT WATSON LITERARY PRIZE IN FICTION. The Demon Who Peddled Longing was honored by Shelf Unbound as a Notable Indie Book. Ha graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. His new, highly acclaimed novel Mrs. Rossi’s Dream was recently released in April of 2019 from The Permanent Press.
Marlon Hacla
From Melismas
Matt Hanson
Matt Hanson is a writer and journalist living in Istanbul, and New York, where he works as an arts and culture reporter for various internationally-distributed newspapers and magazines. His piece, “Modern Romaniote Odyssey” was excerpted to introduce his forthcoming photobook, The Clouds of Ioannina, featuring oral histories with one of Europe’s oldest and vanishing minority communities. He is currently producing an anthology of Romaniote Literature to forward an English readers’ appreciation for the Greek-speaking Jewish literary contribution from antiquity through the medieval era to the contemporary.
Ahmet Haşim
Ahmet Haşim was born in Baghdad in 1887 to an old Ottoman family. In 1898, he was sent to Istanbul to learn Turkish and receive a good Ottoman education. He became interested in French and Ottoman poetry at the Sultanî (Galatasaray) High School and published his first poem in 1901. After graduating in 1907, he held various low-level bureaucratic and teaching posts. During World War I, he was a reserve officer and inspector in the Ottoman Army. After discharge, he again had to accept various low-level posts, mostly in education. His first poetry collection, Göl Saatleri (Lake Hours), was published in 1921 and his second collection, Piyale (Wineglass), in 1926. He traveled to Paris and Frankfurt a few times, mostly for medical care. He died in Istanbul in 1933. He is often cited as a forebear by Turkish poets today.
TS Hidalgo
TS Hidalgo (45) holds a BBA (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), a MBA (IE Business School), a MA in Creative Writing (Hotel Kafka) and a Certificate in Management and the Arts (New York University). His works have been published in magazines in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Germany, UK, France, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, India, Singapore and Australia, and he has been the winner of prizes like the Criaturas feroces (Editorial Destino) in short story and a finalist at Festival Eñe in the novel category. He has currently developed his career in finance and stock-market.
John Hilla
John Hilla is a Detroit, Michigan-based attorney, poet, and comedian. A dual Turkish citizen, he formerly edited and published Rebel Route Magazine ("Rock & Roll, Past & Present") and has published poetry in The 3288 Review, The Wayne Literary Review, and Enlish. His poem "Decision" will appear in the forthcoming issue of The Cimmarron Review.
David Holper
David Holper is a Professor of English at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California. He has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His first book, 64 Questions, was published by March Street Press, and he is self-publishing his second book The Bridge. The above poem is from his recently completed book of poems Language Lessons: A Linguistic Hegira. The collection consists of 109 poems, each poem with an untranslateable word from a foreign language (or in a few cases, rare words in English), its definition, and an interpretation on that word in a poem. In addition, the 109 poems represent the beads on the japa mala, the prayer beads that Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs use in their spiritual walk, and in this same sense, the book is a spiritual exploration of language through the poems. He has about 80 poems in various journals, including publications in Pilgrimage, First Things, Poetry in the Cathedral, Ruminate, Rock and Sling, Conversations Across Borders, Toyon, The Kerf, and Perigee-Art.com. I have also published about a dozen pieces of fiction in various quarterlies, including Grand Street, the New Virginia Review, and Callaloo.
Maheen Hyder
Maheen Hyder is a Pakistani poet and clinical social worker currently living in Toronto.
Asma Iftikhar
Muhammed Taha Inan
Muhammed Taha Inan was born in Van, Turkey, in 1993. Due to his father’s education, as a family, they travelled to the U.S.A right after his birth. There, he studied until 5th grade and moved to Saudi Arabia in 2004. After losing his father in 2008, he permanently moved back to Turkey with his family until present. He has attended several academic conferences and symposiums on literature in Ege University, Pamukkale University and Karadeniz Technical University. He is currently continuing his education as an English Language and Literature student in Kocaeli University. Meanwhile he is working on a novel about lost identities and also composes poems in both English and Turkish.
Abu Ishaque
Abu Ishaque (1926 – 2003) is an award-winning Bangladeshi litterateur. Surja Dighal Bari (1948) is his famed magnum opus. His other works include Padmar Polidwip (1986), Jal (1988), Harem (1962) and Mahapatanga (1963). Among the numerous accolades won by this writer are the prestigious The Bangla Academy Award (1962- 63), the Ekushey Padak and the Swadhinata Padak (Posthumous, 2004).
Ed Jay
Ed Jay (also known as Ed Parris) Has had poetry published in Poetry, New York Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Colorado Review, Blueline and many others. He has recently published the volume, Poeticonnection, with his wife, Mary Jay, a Persian poet. They met in Ankara and spent some time in Istanbul, and currently live on the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States. His website is www.edjaymfa.com.
Rowan S Johnson
Rowan Sylva is a New Zealand based debut Author and activist. Born in 1986, Rowan spent several years drifting between different jobs and places. He studied history at Victoria University of Wellington and then went on to complete a Master of Creative Writing at Auckland University of technology. He enjoys exploring remote corners of the world and observing the maelstrom of its great cities.
His debut novel, Swamp Gum is available in hard copy from Amazon
Kriselda Kaçupaj
Onur Kara
Onur is a PhD student and researcher based in London
Dilara Karabey
Frank G. Karioris
Frank G. Karioris (he/they/him/them) is a writer and educator based in Pittsburgh whose writing addresses issues of friendship, masculinity, sexuality, and gender. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Hong Kong Review of Books, Burning House Press, Back Patio Press, Collective Unrest, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Maudlin House, and the Berlin Review of Books.
Katrina Keegan
Katrina Keegan is an undergraduate student and writer who traveled in Turkey in September, 2017.
Deniz Keleş
Melisa Kesmez
Melisa Kesmez has published two works of fiction, Bazen Bahar and Atları Bağlayın Geceyi Burada Geçireceğiz, through Sel Publishing. She has also translated a variety of work from English, including NippleJesus by Nick Hornby and a collection of Truman Capote's early stories. She lives in Istanbul with her cat, Keriman.
Hana Korneti
Hana Korneti is a writer with several short story publications, who is trying to figure out if her diplomas would be best put to use to lever the desk, block the sun in the library, or be shredded in a performance art piece. She is based either in Istanbul or in Skopje (she is insistently vague on the matter).
Lindon Krasniqi
Lindon Krasniqi was born and raised in Prishtina, Kosova. He is studying Psychology and Gender Studies in Istanbul, and mainly writes poetry. You can catch him doing slam poetry in Prishtina and Istanbul.
The Great Unlearning
Grove Koger
Grove Koger's the author of When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure, and Assistant Editor of Laguna Beach Art Patron Magazine, Palm Springs Art Patron Magazine, and Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal. I blog at https://worldenoughblog.wordpress.com.
Hana Korneti
Hana Korneti is a writer with several short story publications, who is trying to figure out if her diplomas would be best put to use to lever the desk, block the sun in the library, or be shredded in a performance art piece. She is based either in Istanbul or in Skopje (she is insistently vague on the matter).
Gözde Kurt
Gözde Kurt was born in Kurtuluş, Istanbul. She started to write poems and short stories while in primary school. Her first novel Kozanın Tereddütü (The Cocoon’s Hesitation) was published in 2009. Her book of short stories entitled Ölü Çiçekler Müzesi (The Museum of Dead Flowers) was published and taken into consideration for the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Prize in 2011. Afterwards, she started travelling for three years. After her travels through Cuba and countries in Europe and Latin America she returned to the writer’s life with Köprüde Durup Beni Öpmesini Bekleyeceğim (I’ll Stand on the Bridge and Wait for The Kiss). She earns her living as a translator and is continuing her education in the English Language and Literature Department in Istanbul University.
Ekin Kurtdarcan
Born and raised in Ankara, Ekin is currently a student of Comparative Literature at King’s College London. With a background in classical piano, she is constantly looking for ways to incorporate music into her writing. She writes essays, reviews on visual arts, short stories and poetry, and has an unhealthy obsession with opera, travelling, cultural studies and postcolonial literary theory.
Öznur Kutkan
Oznur Kutkan, born in Ankara in 1953, is a graduate of Ankara Industrial Arts School of Higher Education. After teaching industrial arts for 11.5 years in Elazig, Konya, Turhal and Izmir, she relocated to the U.S.A. with her two daughters. She is currently retired in Izmir, where she continues to write.
Gökçe Küçük
Gökçe Küçük is an İstanbulite by birth, Kiwi by transplant operation. She has a high profile as a comdeienne extraordinaire and performs regularly in Istanbul when around. She also writes poetry and translates.
Edward Lam
Kenny Laurie
Emma Lee
Emma Lee’s most recent collection is “Ghosts in the Desert” (IDP, UK 2015), she co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge,” (Five Leaves, UK, 2015), reviews for The High Window Journal, The Journal, London Grip and Sabotage Reviews and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com.
Lennart Lundh
Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965.
Enesa Mahmić
Enesa Mahmić (1989) is an Bosnian writer based in Slovenia. She has published five poetry collections. Her work has appeared in anthologies such as Social Justice and Intersectional Feminism, University of Victoria (Canada), The Larger Geometry; I am strength (USA), We Refugees (Australia), QUEEN Global voices of 21th century female Poets (India), Le Voci della poesia (Italy), Writing Politics and Knowledge Production (Ireland \ Zimbabwe) and more. Intercultural writing, social justice, feminism and history are central to her work.
Jennifer Manoukian
Jennifer Manoukian is a doctoral student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the language practices of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
Büşra Marşan
A spartan born in 1996, she studies translation in Boğaziçi University. She has lived in London and various cities of Turkey and currently resides in İstanbul. She’s been writing for ages in both Turkish and English but only recently gathered the courage to publish her work. Her favourite authors include Salman Rushdie, Marcel Proust, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut and John Keats. She likes carbs, her cats, and well-written literature equally. She is proud of her début in The Bosphorus Review and dreams of making it to The New Yorker one day.
Eleonora Masi
Eleonora Masi was born in Southern Italy and has had passion for literature since she was a child. She started to write soon after, although the enthusiasm for poetry came only later on. She is a tireless traveller and communicator. She recently returned back to Italy for her masters degree after two intense years spent in Istanbul. You can find her on twitter Here.
Brandon Marlon
Brandon Marlon is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and his writing has been published in 185+ publications in 25 countries. www.brandonmarlon.com.
Archie McKay
Born in the now-defunct Hope Hospital in Salford with a birth cord tight around the neck, one he has been unraveling ever since. When not fronting The Young Shaven, he enjoys tying strings to plants, making up drag names, and long walks on the Bosphorus. Like any good citizen, he has interest in all forms of masturbation, except the written.
Bruce Mcrae
Sultan Mehmet (II)
If you don’t know who this person is, you need to sort your bloody life out.
Rebecca Meier
After enjoying the pulsing chaos of Istanbul and the calm tranquility surrounding the city during her Erasmus year abroad, Rebecca Meier has now settled back in Berlin. She is an author and editor at MAVIBLAU, a German-language online magazine, which is based in Istanbul and deals with stories, events and encounters between Turkey and the German-speaking world in the fields of art, culture and society.
Birgit Metzler
Birgit is an English teacher at St. George Austrian High-School. she been teaching here for three years now. Before that she worked in Vienna.
Daniel ‘Abdal-Hayy Moore
Daniel 'Abdal-Hayy Moore’s poem, from the poetry collection He Comes Running, was contributed by Medina Whiteman, head of social media for www.ecstaticxchange.com. ‘Abdal-Hayy Moore was an American Beat/Sufi poet who won several Nazim Hikmet Awards, an American Book Award, and was voted one of the 150 most influential Muslims. His final work, posthumously published, was Holy Door in the Ground. He passed away in April 2016.
Ruby Moore
Ruby Moore is a freelance copywriter who lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. She started her career in film and teaching screenwriting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In 2014, she founded Creatives-Sofia, a creative collective of international creatives and is co-founder of Artist Tree Sofia, a community art studio creating work in the city.
Lisa Morrow
Lisa Morrow is a Sydney, Australia-born sociologist, travel and opinion essay writer who lives in Istanbul, Turkey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BBC Travel, Public Radio International, English Kills, The Independent UK, Al-Monitor, The Smart Set, Hyperallergic, Aljazeera, New York Times Travel, Meanjin, The Laurel Review and elsewhere. She also runs www.insideoutinistanbul.com, the result of her determination to scratch away the seemingly mundane surface of ordinary Turkish life to reveal the complexities below.
Nina Mouawad
Nina Mouawad is a Lebanese poet and Master’s student of English Language and Literature at the University of Balamand. Her work has appeared in Act One: Cutting Edges and Rusted Radishes.
Mark Muller
Resident in Istanbul for the past twelve years, Mark Muller endeavours to understand existential conundrums in relation to history, geography and migration/exile.
Mark Murphy
Mark A. Murphy’s first full length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse was published in 2013 by Salmon Poetry, Eire. His next full collection, Night Wanders Plea is to be published by Waterloo press in December 2017. His poems have appeared in over 175 journals worldwide.
Liam Murray
Liam Murray is a freelance translator by trade, who has lived in Turkey for the best part of eight years and has lived, worked, and studied in everywhere from Adıyaman to İzmir. After stints writing for Time Out, Yabangee, and other foreigner-geared media outlets, he has decided to concentrate his writing on personal prose, poetry, polemics and the textual portrayal of an ever-encroaching mid-life crisis in which his punk roots observe him with a heavy eye. He is the poetry editor for the Bosphorus Review of Books.
Gönül Mustafa
Nagihan Mutlu
Othman Nahhas
Othman is an aspiring author and stand up comic
Robert Nicolaisen
Mikheil Nishnianidze
Mikheil Nishnianidze is an interpreter, editor, and translator in English/Georgian/Russian language pairs. He writes here about his father’s and his own life on one hand, and on the other hand tries to offer an impartial view of the Soviet epoch from an insider’s prospective.
Askhat Omirbayev
Askhat Omirbayev is a Kazakh journalist and writer. He holds a BA in History of Kazakhstan from the Semey State University and MA in Journalism from the Karaganda State University. Recipient of several national literary awards, he had published two collections of prose and a children’s book. He currently serves as a director and editor-in-chief of the Karatal District regional newspaper.
Ndukwe Onuoha
Ndukwe Onuoha was born and raised in Aba, Abia State, Nigeria. He studied History and International Relations at Abia State University. He fuses a unique conversational delivery with traditional instrumentation to deliver poetry that is accessible, relatable and at once punchy. An incurable ad man, Ndukwe is an award-winning copywriter and Creative Director of 7even Interactive, a fast-rising advertising agency in Lagos, Nigeria.
Iris Orpi
Iris Orpi is an immigrant from the Philippines to the USA, currently living in Chicago, Illinois with her husband and toddler son. Her poems have appeared on dozens of online and print publications around Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa. In 2014 she was an Honorable Mention for the American Poetry Prize, given annually by Chicago Poetry Press. She is the author of the novel The Espresso Effect and the book of compiled poems Cognac for the Soul. She misses her native country and often draws inspiration from her journey towards calling the Midwest home.
Sergio Ortiz
Sergio A. Ortiz is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Loch Raven Review, Drunk Monkeys, Algebra Of Owls, Free State Review, and The Paragon Journal. He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.
Emily Owen
Emily is a poet and teacher living in Istanbul. Her work explores themes of intercultural relationships, language, and identity that are influenced by the places she has lived. She also loves to bake, rock climb and owns a bike named James.
Tezer Özlü
Tezer Özlü was born on 10 September 1942 in Simav, Kütahya. Her short stories and autobiographical novel, Çocukluğun Soğuk Geceleri (Cold Nights of Childhood), dealt with oppression in school, the family and marriage, and reflected her own troubled mental health over several mental breakdowns and suicide attempts. A fluent German speaker, she also translated works by Ingmar Bergmann, Heinrich Böll, Kafka and Enzensberger into Turkish. She died in 1986. This piece is from Kalanlar (1990), which collected her unpublished works and notes.
Chris Palmer
Chris Palmer’s poetry has been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Brasilia Review, Shot Glass Journal, Meanjin, Quadrant, and the Weekend Australian, among others. His first collection, Afterlives, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2016. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
Amit Parmessur
Amit Parmessur is a poet and tutor from Mauritius. His writing has appeared in around 160 magazines, namely WINK, The Rye Whiskey Review, Night Garden Journal, Ann Arbor Review and Ethos Literary Journal. He loves to pick off past experiences, turn them over in the light and lie about them.
Thomas Parker
Thomas Parker is a Muslim-American poet, writer and translator from Texas. He writes his own poetry in English as well as translating from Turkish and Arabic. He is the co-founder and former poetry editor for the Bosphorus Review of Books and is currently at work on a debut novel.
On Turkish Poetry Today: An interview with Mel Kenne, one of the editors of the collection Turkish Poetry Today 2017
On the Ottoman Scramble for Africa: An interview with Mostafa Minawi
On Syria's Impossible Revolution: An interview with Yassin Al-Haj Saleh
Shadi H. Parsa
My name is Shadi, which means happiness in Farsi. I am an engineer, designer and a part-time bookworm. I've lived in Kyoto, Istanbul and Milan so far. Design has always been my passion while engineering quenches my thirst for the details. While living in Istanbul, I experienced the chaos and the beauty of the city and its people. It made me a better person and made me observe and feel the city with my heart. During my stay in Istanbul, I became more and more obsessed with specific types of books, biographies and fictions since it was the essence of the city. Now I am in Milan, the city of design and the new reading list of mine leans more towards philosophy, aesthetics and thinking. My new concept crush is "composition of thoughts". I do not know where will I live next, but I am eager to learn more and read as much as I can.
Merve Pehlivan
Merve is a writer, translator and interpreter based in Istanbul. She is also the host and founder of Spoken Word Istanbul
Karen Petersen
Karen Petersen has traveled the world extensively, publishing both nationally and internationally in a variety of publications. Most recently, she was published in The Manzano Mountain Review and Pilgrimage Magazine in the USA, Antiphon in the UK, Wild Words in Germany and A New Ulster in Northern Ireland. In 2015, she read "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" at the Yeats Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the KGB Bar in NYC. Her poems have been translated into Persian and Spanish. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Classics from Vassar College and an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
Emilia Petkowa
Emilia Petkowa grew up in a small town in Bulgaria and enjoys mainly writing poems and short stories. She studied Polish Language and Literature at the University of Warsaw. Prior to moving to Istanbul, she lived in the UK, where she worked in information technology.
Andy Phillips
Andy Phillips is a screenwriter, actor, director, and poet currently based in sunny Los Angeles after many long New York City winters. His first short film, Words, screened at festivals worldwide including Festival De Cannes Court Métrage, London's InShort Film Festival, and NewFilmmakers New York. He is a graduate of The Actors Studio MFA.
Alex Andy Phuong
Alex Andy Phuong earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from California State University-Los Angeles in 2015. He was a former Statement Magazine editor who currently writes about literature, film, and culture. He has written film reviews for more than one hundred motion pictures for MovieBoozer, and his writing has appeared both online and in print. Alex is a fool who dares to dream, crazy as he may seem. Here's to the fools who dream!
Shaheed Quadri
R. A.
Taher Raad
Melinda A. Reyes
Melinda A. Reyes is a writer based in Istanbul and Washington, DC.
Cheryl Rice
Cheryl A. Rice is founder and host of the now-defunct “Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Rice's work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Florida Review, Home Planet News, Mangrove, The Temple, and Woodstock Times, among others. Chapbooks include Llama Love (2017: Flying Monkey Press), Moses Parts the Tulips (2013: APD Press), and My Minnesota Boyhood (2012: Post Traumatic Press). Her RANDOM WRITING workshops are held throughout the Hudson Valley. Her poetry blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/.
Janine Rich
Janine is a recovering academic and (very) amateur gardener. She lives on the European side.
Bernard Robinson
Anna Rogava
Anna is an anthropologist from Tbilisi, Georgia.
Rohith
Jim Ross
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after leaving public health research. He's since published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in over 100 journals and anthologies in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Publications include Columbia Journal, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, The Atlantic, and The Manchester Review. Forthcoming incudes: Granta, Roanoke Review, and Typehouse. In the past year, he wrote and acted in his first play; and, a nonfiction piece led to a role in a soon-to-be-released, high-profile documentary limited series. Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of five preschoolers—split their time between the city and the mountains.
Edwin Rozic
Edwin Rozic received his M.A. in English Literature from DePaul University. He teaches English to people who already speak English and lives in Chicago with his wife and son and a menagerie of furry and scaled beasts. His work has been published in McSweeney's, Glimmer Train, The Matador Review, SalonZine, The Ekphrastic Review, and after hours.
Anam Saeed
Anam Saeed is from Dehradun, India. He has been working in Doha, Qatar as an Administrative Manager from the past year. He graduated in Business Administration in 2012. He has a keen interest in poetry, theology and philosophy (especially the works of Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal and his concept of "khudi" or self). This particular poem also finds inspiration from the works of Allama Iqbal's concept of self and its love for the divine .
Tayak Salinas
Sebnem Sanders
Sebnem E. Sanders is a native of Istanbul, Turkey. Currently she lives on the eastern shores of the Southern Aegean where she dreams and writes Flash Fiction and Flash Poesy, as well as longer works of fiction. Her flash stories have been published on the Harper Collins Authonomy Blog, The Drabble, Sick Lit Magazine, Twisted Sister Lit Mag and Spelk Fiction. She has a completed manuscript, The Child of Heaven and two works in progress, The Child of Passion and The Lost Child. Her collection of short and flash fiction stories, Ripples on the Pond, was published in December 2017. Her stories have also been published in two Anthologies: Paws and Claws and One Million Project, Thriller Anthology. More information can be found at her website where she publishes some of her work: https://sebnemsanders.wordpress.com/
Leon Sandler
Gergo Sastyin
Gergo is a Hungarian-born polyglot, and a restless digital nomad with daydreaming tendencies.
Gamze S. Saymaz
Gamze S. Saymaz is a (screen)poet who has recently turned one of her poems into an experimental video art project that can be seen here throughout February. She has a Youtube channel where she recites original poetry and promotes public performances of personal vulnerability for some probably pretentious reason. You can also follow her on Instagram for screening updates.
Bengisu Sakarya
Tom Schwartz
Najat Sghyar
Born and raised in Casablanca, Morroco, Najat studied corporate law in France and worked as a journalist in her hometown before moving to Istanbul in 2014 to focus on writing. Fluent in six languages, she writes short stories in darija- the Moroccan dialect-, poetry in English and Arabic and is currently working on a novel in French. She is a founder member of the Istanbul writing club Yirmi Yedi.
Yaqeen Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander
Yaqeen Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander is from Kashmir, India. He graduated from International Islamic University Malaysia majoring in Psychology with a Theology minor. Currently, a Master’s student of Guidance & Counselling Psychology at Marmara University, he loves writing, camping, story-telling and philosophy. Working on his 3rd book now about self-help & spirituality which will be available by next year, he is also an aspiring novelist. He also runs a non-profit for Refugee Education & Youth Empowerment called ‘Inspire ME Global’.
Laura Sestafe Silvestre
Laura Sestafe Silvestre is currently an independent researcher on Arab North African countries at the Autonomous University of Madrid. She is focused on left-wing organisations during the second half of the 20th century from a postcolonial and decolonial perspective. Her passion about the Middle East and Arab North African countries can be tell also in the literature she reads, especially graphic novels written by authors of those countries.
R.K. Singh
Ram Krishna Singh, an Indian English poet, has been writing for about four decades. A former professor of English at IIT-ISM in Dhanbad, India, he has published more than 160 research articles, 175 book reviews and 42 books, including Sense and Silence: Collected Poems (2010), New and Selected Poems Tanka and Haiku (2012), You Can’t Scent Me and Other Selected Poems (2016), God Too Awaits Light (2017), Growing Within (2017), and There's No Paradise and Other Selected Poems Tanka & Haiku (2019). http://profrksingh.wordpress.com .
Laura Solomon
Laura Solomon has a 2.1 in English Literature (Victoria University, 1997) and a Masters degree in Computer Science (University of London, 2003).
Her books include Black Light, Nothing Lasting, Alternative Medicine, An Imitation of Life, Instant Messages, Vera Magpie, Hilary and David, In Vitro, The Shingle Bar Sea Monster and Other Stories, University Days, Freda Kahlo’s Cry, Brain Graft, Taking Wainui and Marsha's Deal.
She has won prizes in Bridport, Edwin Morgan, Ware Poets, Willesden Herald, Mere Literary Festival, and Essex Poetry Festival competitions.
She was short-listed for the 2009 Virginia Prize and the 2014 International Rubery Award and won the 2009 Proverse Prize. She has had work accepted in the Edinburgh Review and Wasafiri (UK), Takahe and Landfall (NZ). She has judged the Sentinel Quarterly Short Story Competition.
Her play ‘The Dummy Bride’ was part of the 1996 Wellington Fringe Festival and her play ‘Sprout’ was part of the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Daniya Sonmez
Malte Spielmann & Tim Wolff
Malte Spielmann and Tim Wolff are guest authors at MAVIBLAU, a German-language online magazine which is based in Istanbul and deals with stories, events and encounters between Turkey and the German-speaking world in the field of art, culture and society.
M.G. Stephens
M. G. Stephens has published many books, including the critically acclaimed novel The Brooklyn Book of the Dead; the travel memoir Lost in Seoul (Random House, 1990); and the award-winning essay collection Green Dreams.
R. S. S
The monogrammist RSS is a writer of both prose and poetry. He is currently seeking an NYC-based publicist for his novel, “A Bended Circuity”.
Jessica Stilling
Jessica Stilling has published over 40 short stories and poems in various literary journals including Caustic Frolic, The Warwick Review and Wasifiri. Her debut novel Betwixt and Between was published in 2013 and most recent novel, a literary examination of the life of the poet Sylvia Plath, will be published in September 2019 by Bedazzled Books. She has taught writing and literature at various schools including The New School, The State University of New York, The City University of New York and The Gotham Writer's Workshop. She has published nonfiction in various outlets including Tor.com and the Ms. Magazine Blog.
Dora Šustić
Born in Rijeka, Croatia, Dora Šustić (1991) obtained her BA in political studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2012, she moved to Prague, where she currently studies screenwriting for a MA degree at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU). Her poems, fiction and non-fiction have been published in several international journals (GUTS Magazine, Hourglass Literary Magazine, Modna, Magazine for Art and Feminism etc.). She wrote and directed several short films and is currently writing her first feature screenplay, Virgins of Pomegranates.
Chuck Taylor
Chuck Taylor won the Austin Book Award. He was CETA poet-in-residence for the City of Salt Lake, and worked in the poets-in-the-schools program in Victoria, Galveston, and Beaumont. He and friends operated a co-operative bookstore in Austin, Texas living in the basement from 1980-88. He has published two novels, two short story collections, one book of essays, and seven collections of poetry. From 1989 to 2015 he taught creative writing at Texas A&M University.
Pinar Tarhan
Pinar Tarhan is a freelance writer, blogger, and fiction writer. She loves writing about pop culture, psychology, and relationships. You can catch her musings on the writing life on Addicted to Writing and follow her on Twitter @zoeyclark.
Casey Telesk
P. Casey Telesk is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul. He published his first short story, an Alternate History tale about the assassination of President Truman in his elementary school journal at the age of eight. His 1999-2005 anthology of bad breakup poetry has not yet found a home. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he received a BA in English Lit from Penn State University, and is a graduate of the Wilkes University M.A./M.F.A. Creative Writing Program. He enjoys writing about modernist literature, the Death of Affect, and the importance of structure in literary craft.
Gabrielle Anaïs Tekerian
Anjaly Thomas
You can read Anjaly's book here, or visit the web page here
Selin Toledo
Selin Toledo was born and raised in Istanbul. She received her Bachelor's in Biology at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She published her work on fungal ecology in well-known scientific journals at Cardiff University, UK and later got her Master's from Humboldt State University in California, USA where she published work on paleobotany. She is currently living in Istanbul, where she contributes to magazines in English, Turkish and Italian. She is also an editor in Avlaremoz and a regular contributor to the Judeo-Espanyol (Ladino) pages of Şalom newspaper and El Amaneser.
T. Ecem Tosun
Ecem is an interior architect and designer based in İstanbul. Besides her profession, she is a junior writer, curious traveller, amateur photographer, beginner in lindy-hop, art-lover and full-time dreamer.
James Tressler
James Tressler is the author of Conversations in Prague and The Trumpet Fisherman, and was a journalist for the Times-Standard in Eureka, California. He currently is living in Istanbul.
Thata Tumedi
Thata M. Tumedi is a 24 year old writer and poetess from Botswana now residing in Turkey. She is currently pursuing her masters in Human Resource Management at Nisantasi University. She defines happiness in three words: Love,Travel and Art. Thata spends her holidays and weekends volunteering and doing charity work because there is no better art than LOVE. She draws her strength and wisdom from her mother and thrives to inspire young women to speak out through poetry and art.
Gizem Gözde Uçar
Gizem graduated from Koç University with a double major, she writes, translates, illustrates, draws, tells stories, teaches and tutors. She also volunteers in TEGV and has a workshop there called “Fairy Tale Workshop.” She has two cats and imaginary friends. She can be found on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/gizemgozdeucar
Yaprak Ünver
Born and raised in Istanbul, Yaprak currently lives in New York City where she enjoys acting and writing.
Uncrowned Danish Prince
Ezgi Üstündağ
Ezgi Üstündağ is a writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She has contributed pieces on Turkish music to Reorient and Cornucopia magazines. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in the Turkish literary journals 'YKY Kitap-lık,'‘Kaybolan Defterler’ and ‘Lemur.’ She is also a co-organizer of the annual Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Festival.
Alptekin Uzel
Alptekin Uzel is a writer and computer scientist living in Istanbul. His reviews are published in mediums like K24, Altyazı, Agos and Sol. He is currently submitting his first novel manuscript for publication.
Nail V
Nail V. (Nail Vahdeti Çakırhan) was born in 1910 in a town south of Muğla in southwestern Turkey. He published the joint poetry collection 1 + 1 = Bir with Nâzım Hikmet in 1930. He was arrested various times because of his poetry. In 1934, he secretly emigrated to the Soviet Union to study, but was forced back to Turkey in 1937. He spent four years in prison because of his publications. He later became an architect, winning the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983. He died in Muğla in 2008.
Andy Veo
Joe Vickers
Joe Vickers was born in the US, studied English and writing in Wisconsin and has lived in other countries since. After many years in Istanbul, he moved to Berlin, where he currently lives with his wife.
Julene Weaver
Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA; she worked in AIDS services for over 21 years. Her three poetry books are: truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, (Finishing Line Press, 2017), No Father Can Save Her (Plain View Press, 2011), and a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues(Finishing Line Press, 2007). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poems can be found online at: Anti-Heroin Chic, Riverbabble, River & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Writing in a Woman's Voice, and a creative nonfiction piece is published by Yellow Chair Press, In The Words of Women International 2016 Anthology. You can find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.
Jessup Eric William
Jessup Eric William is the pen name of an English Teacher in Istanbul. He came here on a whim in 2015 and has returned to live, write, and experience the city. He is interested in combining personal experience, journalism, history, and myth into one form of story-telling.
Mark Wyers
Mark David Wyers completed his BA in literature at the University of Tampa and his MA in Turkish Studies at the University of Arizona. From 2008 to 2013 he was the director of the Academic Writing Center at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, during which time he wrote a historical book-length study titled “Wicked Istanbul”: The Regulation of Prostitution in the Early Turkish Republic and began translating Turkish literature into English. His published translations of novels include Boundless Solitude by Selim İleri, As the Red Carnation Fades by Feyza Hepçilingirler, The King of Taksim Square by Emrah Serbes, The Pasha of Cuisine by Saygın Ersin and The Peace Machine by Özgür Mumcu. His translations of Turkish short stories have been published in anthologies and journals such as Transcript, Absinthe, Istanbul in Women’s Short Stories, Europe in Women’s Short Stories from Turkey, and Aeolian Visions/Versions: Modern Classic and New Writing from Turkey.
Özlem Yıldız
Özlem Yıldız is an independent researcher with a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Research from Bahçeşehir University. She is interested in acting and is currently writing a dystopic play about the modern imperative for happiness. She lives and works in Sahrayıcedit, in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district.
Rüya Yönak
Ruya is a freelance copywriter and blogger (ymagination.co.uk). She is originally from Istanbul, but moved to London four years ago and finished university there. She has been writing poetry since she was 7 and started writing in English in middle school. She likes to visualise and paint images with words and let her imagination take over.
Stephanie Yost
Stephanie Yost is a writer of prose, visual artist and patron of the dark arts. Her work reflects the tangible shadows of love and loss. It seeks to find romance and beauty in the most seemingly impossible of places. Places we overlook and places we dare not look. Unapologetically, she is driven to show you what you love, lust and fear the most.
Barry Yourgrau
Writer-performer Barry Yourgrau is the author of books of surreal, funny, intensely short stories, including A Man Jumps Out of An Airplane, Wearing Dad’s Head, Haunted Traveller, and The Sadness of Sex, in whose film version he starred.
He’s also written a memoir, Mess, and anti-kids’ stories for kids, Nastybook.
Barry is the only American author who’s published short fiction on Japanese cellphones (keitai sosetsu) His work has a fine following in Japan.
As performer, he and his stories have appeared on MTV’s “Unplugged: Spoken Word” and NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and “All Things Considered,” among others. He won a Drama-Logue Award for “Wearing Dad’s Head: The Live Version” and was invited to Sundance Theater Lab to workshop Haunted Traveller. He is proud of starring in Anthrax’s heavymetal music video, “Black Lodge”.
Yourgrau’s fictions have appeared in New Yorker.com, The Paris Review, VICE, Story, Bomb, Poetry, Film Comment, Monkey Business Int’l, Little Star, Harvard Design Magazine, and various anthologies. He’s also written for the NY Times, New Yorker.com, Wall St. Journal, Spin, Paris Review Daily, The Baffler, HuffPost, Salon, Independent (U.K.), Artforum. He’s blogged for PsychologyToday.com.
Born in South Africa, he lives in New York and Istanbul. And travels a lot.
Nafije Zogaj
Nafije Zogaj is an English Teacher for second language learners, and has been working in Prishtina, capital of Kosova, for eleven years. In her free time, she writes poetry and prose (mainly in Albanian). She was supposed to be either a writer or a scientist, or both, but, unexpectedly, she ended up as a teacher.