Ece Temelkuran as artist in residence in Amsterdam

From the 1st of November until 31 December, Turkish author and journalist Ece Temelkuran will be staying in Amsterdam as a writer in residence at the invitation of the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

Ece Temelkuran (1973) is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry as well as a journalist and political reporter, writing for Turkisch newspapers, The Guardian, New Statesman*, al Akhbar, New Left Review and Le Monde Diplomatique. Her newspaper articles cover subjects that are considered highly controversial in Turkey, such as the Armenian-Kurdish relations, the women’s rights movement and the issue of political prisoners. Turkish newspaper Habertürk fired her as a columnist for writing critical pieces on the treatment of the Kurdish. Nonetheless, her columns and articles are published worldwide and she won numerous awards for her journalistic achievements, such as the Pen for Peace Award, the Free Thought and Democracy Award and the award for Turkish Journalist of the Year. Furthermore, Temelkuran was a ‘visiting fellow’ at the Oxford University’s department of Journalism. She published twelve books, of which two were translated in English: the non-fiction title Deep Mountain, Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide (2010), and Book of the Edge (2010), an allegorical journey in poetry.

Temelkuran’s first novel, The Sounds of Bananas, is a story of love and politics in the summer of 2006 in Beirut. In November, Van Gennep Publishers will present the Dutch translation of her debutnovel.

During her stay in Amsterdam, Temelkuran will make an appearance at literary festival Het Grote Gebeuren in Groningen (2 November), she will attend a Turkey Institute-conference about the situation in Istanbul (13-14 December) and she will read the 4th Freedom Lecture, presented by De Balie, Amnesty International and the Prins Claus Foundation.