The Kurdish-Turkish author Burhan Sönmez was born in 1965 in Haymana near Ankara, where he also grew up. His interest in literature was awakened early on by his mother, and he spoke both Turkish and Kurdish from a very early age. Sönmez completed a bachelor of laws and worked for
Ayşe Kulin was born in 1941 in Istanbul. Her Bosnian father Muhittin Kulin helped to build up the Ministry for Water and her mother, Sitare Hanım, was a Circassian and granddaughter of the first Ottoman Minister for Economic Affairs. Kulin grew up in Ankara but spent the summer months in
Aslı Erdoğan was born in Istanbul in 1967. With her origins in the secular middle class, she attended the English-medium school Robert Lisesi and studied computer science at the Bosphorus University, Istanbul. She then worked at the Faculty for Physics at her university and for the European Organisation for Nuclear
