Gonca Özmen

Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur, Tefenni in 1982. She graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature at Istanbul University in 2004. She received her MA degree in 2008, and PhD degree in 2016 from the same department. In 1997, her first poem was published in literary journal Varlık, and she was named 'a poet to watch in the future' at The Yaşar Nabi Nayır Youth Prizes. Her first poetry book Kuytumda [In My Nook] was published in 2000, then came Belki Sessiz [Silent Perhaps] in 2008, and Bile İsteye [Knowingly, Willingly] in 2019. Her poems have been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Slovenian, Italian, Romanian, Persian, Greek and Hebrew. The Sea Within (Selected Poems) was published by Shearsman Books in 2011, and her second book Vielleicht Lautlos was published by Elif Verlag in 2017. Having participated in international poetry readings in various countries abroad, Özmen was granted numerous poetry awards. She edited Çağdaş İrlanda Şiiri Seçkisi [Selection of Contemporary Irish Poetry] (Edisam, 2010) and İlhan Berk’s Çiğnenmiş Gül [Trampled Rose] (Yapı Kredi, 2011), a collection of unpublished poems of the poet after his death. She sat on the editorial board of a literary translation magazine Ç.N. [Translator's Note], and the literary magazines Pulbiber [Chilli Flakes] and Çevrimdışı Istanbul [Offline Istanbul]. She translated five children’s books, Small in the City by Sydney Smith (Kırmızı Kedi, February 2020), The It-Doesn’t-Matter-Suit and Other Stories by Sylvia Plath (Kırmızı Kedi, September 2020), I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott (Kırmızı Kedi, March 2021), Flibbertigibbety Words: Young Shakespeare Chases Inspiration by Donna Guthrie  (Kırmızı Kedi, May 2021), and Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz (Kırmızı Kedi, 2022). She was one of the members of the advisory board of Bursa Nilüfer International Poetry Festival, Three Seas Writers’ and Translators’ Council (TSWTC) based in Rhodes, Greece, and the magazine, Turkish Poetry Today, which was published annually by Red Hand Books, in England. She is currently editing the Turkish poet küçük İskender’s poetry books at Can Publishing, translating the Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, and has been living in Istanbul since 2000.