Henar Press
We're an independent, nonprofit press based in Columbus, Ohio, dedicated to bringing experimental Kurdish writing to the world. Our books span fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from both emerging and established writers from the homeland and diaspora.
People
Firat Cewerî
Author
Firat Cewerî (b. 1959, Dêrik, Mêrdîn) is a renowned writer, editor, and pioneer in modern Kurdish literature. Best known for his role as the editor and publisher of the influential literary journals Nûdem (“New Times,” published from 1992 to 2001) and Nûdem Werger (“New Times Translation”), he has played a crucial role in the evolution of Kurdish literature. His work has fostered the growth of new voices and facilitated the translation of global literary works into Kurdish. Cewerî’s novels and short stories have been translated into Swedish, German, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Sorani, and have been featured in anthologies in German, Swedish, Arabic, and Turkish. His writings have also been aired on Swedish public radio. A member of the Swedish Writers’ Association since 1987, he has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Swedish Academy Prize for Translation of Swedish Literature in 2018, the Iraqi Kurdistan Golden Pen Award in 2020, the Swedish Academy Prize for the Introduction of Swedish Culture Abroad in 2023, and Italy’s Premiere Ostana International Prize in 2024. Firat Cewerî resides in Stockholm and continues his literary work there.
SeyedQader Hedayati
Author
SeyedQader Hedayati (b. 1976, Bukan) is a prominent Kurdish writer whose works investigate the Kurdish question through innovative narrative forms. Hedayati's novels include The Echo of a Full Stop (2000), The Yoke of Azazel (2012), Gabor (2017), The Grave City (2019), and Bardinah (2022). Beyond fiction, he has shaped Kurdish literary discourse through his critical study Kurdish Prose and the Change of Form, the essay collection Stone on Stone, and his Kurdish translation of Bahram Bayzaie's The Truth and The Wise Man.
Jeannette Okur
Translator
Jeannette Okur is a multilingual educator, translator, and researcher. Since 2010, she has coordinated the Turkish Studies program in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses on language, literature, film, and cultural studies. Her research focuses on the dynamics between perpetrators and victims of political violence, exploring themes such as identity, trauma, and displacement in the novels of Turkish- and Iraqi-Kurdish writers in exile. Committed to advancing intercultural communicative competence among language learners, Dr. Okur is the author of the open, media-rich Turkish textbook Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar! (Center for Open Education Resources and Language Learning, 2021) and is currently developing a second open educational resource (OER) titled Sinema Tutkusu: Turkish Language and Culture through Film. Having lived in Germany, the U.S., Austria, and Turkey, she earned her Ph.D. in German Language and Literature from Ankara University in 2007. She is currently studying Kurmanji at Zahra Institute in Chicago and is excited to introduce English-speaking readers to the works of Firat Cewerî through her translation, I Am Going to Kill Somebody (Henar Press).
Chiya Parvizpur
Translator
Chiya Parvizpur (b. 1989, Sanandaj) is a Kurdish writer and translator working in both Kurdish and English. His work has been published by Transnational London Press, Whisper House Press, Henar Press, and Common Notions. His debut novel, The Smell of Wet Bricks, was published in the UK, while his second, Twenty-Four Seconds of Shehin's Life, received the prestigious Kal Literary Prize in Kurdistan. Parvizpur's fiction employs a unique blend of Kurdish surrealism rooted in political realities he terms 'SoorAl' (Reddish in Kurdish). He has translated significant Kurdish novels into English including Ata Nahai's Birds in a Gale, Dealing Helaleh's Destiny, Seyed Qader Hedayati's Gabor, and Jiyar Jahanfard's The Shadeless Border. A dedicated Tembur player, Parvizpur embeds Kurdish tradition within his creative practice as a vital form of resistance. He is currently writing his third novel.
Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo
Translator
Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo (Huri) is a multilingual writer, translator, and researcher with over two decades of teaching experience across language and literature. Drawing from her background in both Kurdish and English Literature, her literary and academic work centers on themes of identity, hybridity, and displacement. Huri is passionate about fostering cultural exchange through literature and education and is actively engaged in translating contemporary Kurdish literary works into English. Her published translations include Ata Nahai's Birds in a Gale and Seyed Qader Hedayati's Gabor (Henar Press). She holds a second Master’s degree in English and Literacy Studies from the University of Stavanger and is pursuing research on cultural hybridity in migration literature.
Aryan Omar Hassan
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Aryan Omar Hassan is the founder of Henar Press, a nonprofit that publishes experimental Kurdish writing and maintains the Kurdish literary database. He has lived in Oslo, Sulaymaniyah, Abu Dhabi, London, and Columbus, and holds degrees from The Ohio State University.
Nawa Amin
Outreach Ambassador
Nawa is a poet, translator, and writer. Her poetry collection “Stagnant Ray” was published by Balinde in 2025. Her writings have appeared in Balinde, DidiMn, Jineftin, and the AUIS Literary Journal. She earned her BA in English for Basic Education from the University of Sulaimany in 2025.
Hannah Fox
Literary Database Archivist
Hannah Fox is a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, UK, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her research focuses on literary representations of bibliomigrancy and censorship in twenty-first century world literature. She has a Masters degree from Queen Mary University in London, where she researched Kurdish literature as "minor literature". Before returning to academia, she worked in various roles in the education and charity sectors and she continues to volunteer as an advocate for refugees in her community.
Tracy Fuad
Board President
Tracy Fuad's second book of poetry, PORTAL (University of Chicago, 2024) won the 2023 Phoenix Emerging Poets Prize. A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Fuad's poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review and The New Republic and have been translated into Kurdish, Turkish, German, and Spanish.
Holly Mason Badra
Board Vice President
Holly Mason Badra received her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University in 2017, where she served as the blog editor for So to Speak: An Intersectional Feminist Journal of Language and Art. Her poems, interviews, and reviews have appeared in various journals, such as: The Northern Virginia Review, The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, SWWIM Everyday, Circumference Magazine, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The University of Arizona Poetry Center Blog, Bourgeon Online, Broad Strokes: The National Museum of Women in the Arts Blog, Outlook Springs, Entropy, and CALYX. She received a Bethesda Urban Partnership Poetry Prize selected by E. Ethelbert Miller. As a Kurdish-American poet, she has been a featured reader at annual Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here events and participated in RAWIFest 2021, as well as other events related to Kurdish diaspora writing/writers. She has been a reader at OutWrite (A Celebration of Queer Literature) in D.C. She has extensive experience as an educator, teaching elementary, middle, high school, and college English, Creative Writing, Humanities, and Literature courses. Holly currently lives in Northern Virginia, working as the Associate Director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. She also reads for Poetry Daily.
Shene Mohammed
Board Outreach & Translation Officer
Shene Mohammed is a translator at the Kurdistan Center for Arts and Culture. Shene graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, and is a Literary Translation MFA graduate from the University of Iowa. She has served as a Managing Editor for Exchanges Journal of Literary Translation. Her writing has appeared in Translation Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry, World Literature Today, M—Dash, Modern Poetry in Translation, Balinde, and Chirok.
Chad W. Post
Board Secretary
Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter Books, a press at the University of Rochester dedicated to publishing contemporary literature from around the world. In addition, he is the managing editor of Three Percent, a blog and review site that promotes literature in translation and is home to the Translation Database, the Best Translated Book Awards, and the Three Percent and Two Month Review podcasts. He is also the author of The Three Percent Problem: Rants and Responses on Publishing, Translation, and the Future of Reading. His articles and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications including The Believer, Publishing Perspectives, the Wall Street Journal culture blog, Bookforum, Rolling Stone, and Quarterly Conversation, among others. In 2018, he received the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.
Gary Lovely
Board Treasurer
Gary Lovely is co-owner of the bookstore Two Dollar Radio HQ and the founder of Harpoon Books, an indie publishing company based in Columbus, Ohio. Gary has been working in books for nearly 16 years across 5 bookstores and 2 publishing houses. He has written about books for the New York Times, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed Books, and more. Gary has been a judge for the National Book Awards for Translated Literature, The Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation, & The James Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is the current Vice President of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association.
Books
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Every donation, big or small, makes a difference in our mission to share Kurdish literature with readers everywhere. Since we're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, every dollar you contribute is tax-deductible. Please consider donating to keep us going.
If you're looking for other ways to support our authors, translators, and organization, consider purchasing our books, requesting them at your library, or lending a hand as a volunteer.
Writers are welcome to submit their manuscripts through our contact form. We accept a variety of genres, including prose, poetry, and everything in between. If you're interested in reading more Kurdish writing, check out our continuously evolving database of Kurdish literature in English.
Contact
We would like to acknowledge that Columbus is the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Shawnee (Shawandasse Tula), Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi (Bodwéwadmi), Miami (Myaamia), Kickapoo (Kiikaapoi), Seneca, among many other Indigenous peoples forcibly displaced through the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.
