Contemporary Writers from Turkey

A rare opportunity to hear from some of the leading names from Turkey's vibrant literary scene - a world where modernity and tradition and East and West, all meet in words, as in the country itself.

Please note that this event will now take place in the Terrace Restaurant, Level One, in the main British Library building.

Speakers will include Ayşe Kulin and Asli E. Perker, in conversation with British novelist Louis De Bernières

• Ayşe Kulin is one of the Turkey’s best selling writers, whose award-winning novels have been translated into 30 languages.  In the 1990s she gave up a highly successful career in television and public relations to devote herself to writing. In 1996, her biography Bir Tatli Huzur (A Sweet Peace) depicting the life of  famous Turkish composer Munir Nurettin Selcuk, was published, and a year later a compilation of short stories which won the prestigious Sait Faik Short Story Award. This success was followed by another biography Adi Aylin (Aylin She Walks in Beauty Like the Night) which remained a best seller for more than a year.  Her many works since then include Gizli Anların Yolcusu (published in English as Passenger of Hidden Voyages) Bora’nın Kitabı (Book of Bora), Nefes Nefese (Last Train to Istanbul), and Veda (Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul, published in English by Dalkey Archive Press); and recent autobiographical novels Hayat Dürbünümde Kırk Sene (Forty Years through My Life's Binoculars) and Hüzün Dürbünümde Kırk Sene Sene (Forty Years through My Melancholy's Binoculars)
• Asli E. Perker was born in Izmir and moved all around the country because of her father's job throughout her school years. She graduated from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences American Studies Department at Dokuz Eylul University. She started her writing career at an ad agency as a copy writer and then turned to journalism. She worked at Aktuel News Magazine and Radikal, Yeni Binyil and Sabah Newspapers. After relocating to New York in 2001, she worked as a translator/interpreter and started focusing on her literature career. Her first novel, Başkalarının Kokusu (The Scent of the Others) was published in 2005. Her second novel Cellat Mezarligi (Executioner's Graveyard) followed in 2009. Her latest novel Soufflé came out in February 2011 and was published in English in 2013 by Telegram. She still continues to write for various magazines and newspapers and lives in New York, Istanbul and Foca.

• Ayşe Kulin and Asli E. Perker will be talking to Louis De Bernières - one of Britain’s best-loved novelists, who effortlessly combines comedy,  eccentricity and bitter sweet storytelling  in such masterpieces as Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and Birds Without Wings (2004) and of course the best selling Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994).  
  

   

   

This event is presented in partnership with the British Council as part of the Cultural Programme for Turkey Market Focus The London Book Fair 2013