Moderator: Olcay Akyıldız

Since 1974, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who has been involved in significant theater productions in Germany and France and has established a prominent place in German literature through the novels and short stories she began writing in the early 1990s, will share with the audience the historical contexts that shaped her life and writing experience, which has evolved across different cultures and Turkish and German languages. Following a reading of a text prepared by Özdamar, Olcay Akyıldız, who has researched the author’s works, will moderate a discussion with the audience.

Born in Malatya in 1946, Emine Sevgi Özdamar is an actress, writer, and dramaturg. Having performed on stage from a young age, Özdamar trained under some of the leading figures in Turkey’s theater world. She moved to Berlin in the mid-1970s and worked with renowned directors such as Benno Besson, Matthias Langhoff, and Claus Peymann in Germany and France. In 1991, she won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for her book Life is a Caravanserai. In 2022, she was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize, considered the most prestigious award in German literature.

After earning a master’s degree in the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at the Boğaziçi University, Olcay Akyıldız completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She has been a faculty member at Boğaziçi University since 2001. Akyıldız, who has edited anthologies on autobiographical genres and travel writing, currently serves as a member of the editorial board of the journal Toplum ve Bilim, a member of the advisory board of the journals Zemin and YILLIK: Annual of İstanbul Studies, and as the deputy director of the Boğaziçi University Nazım Hikmet Center for Culture and Arts Research.

The event will be held in Turkish and registration is not required.