Sulaymaniyah or Slemani, is a city in the east of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, not far from the Iran–Iraq border. It is surrounded by the Azmar (Ezmer), Goizha (Goyje) and Qaiwan (Qeywan) Mountains in the northeast, Baranan Mountain in the south and the Tasluja Hills in the west. The city has a semi-arid climate with very hot dry summers and cold wet winters.
Mehmed Uzun was a Kurdish writer and novelist born in Siverek, Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Though the Kurdish language was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in it and achieved much toward shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. In 1977–2005 he lived in exile in Sweden as a political refugee, becoming a prolific writer, author of a dozen Kurdish-language novels and essays, which made him a founding member of Kurdish literature in Kurmanji dialect. In June 2005 he returned to Istanbul. He was a member of the PEN club and the Swedish writers association. On May 29, 2006, he was found to have stomach cancer. After treatment at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, he returned to Diyarbakir, Turkey, where he died, aged 54.
Cigerxwîn or Cegerxwîn was a Kurdish writer and poet. He is known to be one of the most influential Kurdish writers and poets in the Kurdistan region of the Middle East, and his work has been renewed for the creation of hundreds of songs and played a crucial role in the preservation of Kurdish cultural heritage.
Ferhad Shakely is a prominent Kurdish writer, poet and researcher. He is one of the founders of modern Kurdish poetry in the post-Goran period. He was born in 1951 in the province of Kirkuk in Iraq. He began publishing poetry in 1968. In the early 1970s he studied in the Kurdish department of the Baghdad University. He joined the Kurdish national movement under the leadership of Mustafa Barzany in 1974 and went to Syria in 1975. He lived in Germany from Autumn 1977 to Summer 1978. Finally he settled in Sweden in the same year. In 1981, after studying for one year at the University of Stockholm, he went to Uppsala University where he studied Iranian languages. He is now teaching in the same university. He published a Swedish-Kurdish Journal between 1985 and 1989 called Svensk-Kurdisk Journal. Moreover, he published a literary Kurdish magazine, Mamosta-y Kurd between 1985 and 1996. In 1992, he published Kurdish nationalism in Mam and Zin of Ahmad Khani, a literary history that was translated into Swedish, Turkish and Arabic. Many of his poems have been translated into Persian, Arabic, Norwegian, Swedish, English, French, Italian, Icelandic and Danish.
Tawfeq Mahmoud Hamza or Piramerd was a Kurdish poet, writer, novelist and journalist. He was born in the Goija neighborhood of Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region. In 1926, he became the editor of the Kurdish newspaper Jîyan. He also established a private Kurdish school in Kurdistan, called Pertûkxaney Zanistî.
Mahwi (1830-1906) was one of the most prominent classical Kurdish poets and sufis from Kurdistan of Iraq. He studied in Sablakh and Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan. He became a judge in the court of Slemani, in today's Iraq, in 1862, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. He travelled to Istanbul and met Abdul-Hamid II in 1883. He established a khaneqah, an Islamic religious school and mosque, in Slemani and named it after an Ottoman emperor. In his poems, he mainly promotes sufism, but also deals with the human condition and existential problems, such as questions about the meaning of life.
Rafiq Sabir is a contemporary Kurdish poet.
Kajal Ahmad is a contemporary Kurdish poet and journalist, known for the show Dijebaw on Kurdsat. She started writing poetry in 1987.
Mahabad Qaradaghi or Mehabad Qeredaxî was a Kurdish activist, writer, poet and translator. She was born in Kifri, a town near Kirkuk. Her first collections of poems were published in 1980, and she was imprisoned by the Ba'athist regime from 1980 to 1981. In 1993, she emigrated to Sweden. She was the adviser of Prime Minister in Women's Issues, in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Kurdish literature is literature written in the Kurdish languages. Literary Kurdish works have been written in each of the four main languages: Zaza, Gorani, Kurmanji and Sorani. Ali Hariri (1009–1079) is one of the first well-known poets who wrote in Kurdish. He was from the Hakkari region.
Hussein Khaliqi or Huseyn Xelîqî or Hossein Khalighi or Ḥusayn Khalīqī, is a contemporary Kurdish writer. He was born in Iranian Kurdistan. He studied philosophy, history and sociology in University of Tabriz. He is currently the head of the Kurdish Institute of Stockholm.
Karim Hisami or Kerîmî Hisamî, (1926–2001) was an Iranian-Kurdish writer. He was born in the village of Beyrem near Mahabad. His real name was Karimi Mirza Hamed. Karim Hisami was his pen-name. At early age, he became involved in politics, and was registered as the 18th member of Komeley Jiyanewey Kurd party. He was a member of political bureau of Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran until 1984. He lived most of his life in exile. In 1958, he fled to Iraq. In 1960, he moved to Czechoslovakia, where he studied in university. In the 1970s, he was working in Radio Peyk Iran in Bulgaria. He went back to Iran in 1978 after the revolution. In 1985 he moved to Sweden, where he stayed until his death on October 6, 2001. In Sweden, he published a Kurdish journal titled Serdemî Nwê from 1986 to 1990. He was also closely affiliated with the Iraqi Communist Party. He is famous for his memoires, titled Le Bîreweriyekanim. He published eleven volumes of his massive memoires, between 1986 and 2001. This work is an important source for the study of Kurdish political movements in Iran. He has also translated literary works of Maxim Gorky, Ignazio Silone and Nikos Kazantzakis into Kurdish.
Ali Hariri or Sheikh Ahmed Bohtani was a Kurdish poet who wrote in Kurmanji and considered a pioneer in classical Kurdish Sufi literature and a founder of the Kurdish literary tradition.
Nazand Begikhani is a contemporary Kurdish/British writer, poet and leading academic researcher into gender based violence, and an active advocate of human rights. She is an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, Centre for Gender and Violence Research and has been awarded the Vincent Wright Chair 2019/2020 and works as a visiting professor at Sciences Po School for International Affairs, Paris.
Ahmad Hardi was a prominent Kurdish poet.
Choman Hardi ,(born 1974) is a Kurdish poet, translator and painter.
Khalil Rashow or Xelîl Cindî Reşo is a contemporary Kurdish academic, writer and researcher.
Dilan is regarded as one of the most influential Kurdish Poets and one of the greatest maqam singers of his time. He was one of the few early poets that brought a revolution in Kurdish poetry and literature in the 20th century.
Shwan Kamal was born in the city of Sulaimaniyya in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967. He is a Kurdish and German artist and sculptor.
Jila (Zhila) Hosseini (1964–1996), poet, writer, researcher and radio announcer, was born on September 22, 1964, in Saqqez, Iran and was the first Kurdish woman to compose modern poems instead of classical poetry.
