Image: “Newroz Pîroz Be, Happy Newroz, 2023” by Shayan Nuradeen
The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Sleeping in the Courtyard: An Anthology of Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora, edited by Holly Mason Badra.
Often described as the world’s largest stateless group, more than 40 million Kurdish people live in the global diaspora. Kurds have endured countless forms of militarized displacement, cultural destruction, and mass genocide. The Kurdish languages have been suppressed and criminalized, and the stories of the Kurdish people have been untold or unheard.
Sleeping in the Courtyard: An Anthology of Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora shines a light on works by a group of diverse contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers living in Kurdistan and in diaspora. Featuring poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and graphic work by both emerging and well-established writers, this collection recognizes the complex web of physical and lingual displacement of the Kurdish people. It presents work originally written in English and work translated from Kurdish dialects as well as from the Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Swedish. Original Kurdish dialects are also included to recognize the history of linguicide and push against oppressive attempts to strip away Kurdish language.
The writing in this collection showcases variety in representation, voice, point of view, identity, intersectional experience, geographical context, as well as in style and genre. What emerges is the antithesis of erasure. This collection brings together historically isolated writers in connectivity, collective, and community—and invites readers to join around the table to share in their stories, laughter, tears, secrets, memories, and warmth.
Sleeping in the Courtyard will be published in June 2025.