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Sleeping in the Courtyard brings together historically isolated writers in community—and invites readers to join us around the table. Featuring poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and graphic work by emerging and well-established writers, this collection shines a light on works by a diverse group of contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers living in Kurdistan and in diaspora.

Recognizing the complex web of physical and lingual displacement of the Kurdish people and celebrating the diverse tapestry of their stories, this collection presents work originally written in English and work translated from Kurdish dialects as well as from Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Swedish. A few works in Kurdish dialects appear alongside their translations, both in recognition of the experience of linguicide and to push against oppressive attempts to strip away Kurdish language.

Several works here explore the impact of the countless forms of militarized displacement, cultural destruction, and mass genocide that Kurds have endured. Other pieces illuminate Kurdish experiences of desire, friendship, empowerment, familial intricacies, and other topics spanning across universal human conditions. The writers in these pages take risks both in craft and content—and in some cases, just by daring to write and publish. What emerges in Sleeping in the Courtyard is the antithesis of erasure.

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“As a Palestinian American writer, I have long searched for reflections of my own fragmented lineage—this anthology gave me that and more. Sleeping in the Courtyard is more than an anthology—it is a reclamation. At once fierce and tender, the collection defies monolithic portrayals of Kurdish identity and instead renders a chorus of nuance, complexity, and lived truth. From the ruins of Halabja to the rooftops of Baghdad, from the quiet defiance of translation to the unbreakable thread of community, this anthology is a testament to the power of writing as cultural survival—and as revolutionary act. Curated with deep care and transnational breadth, Sleeping in the Courtyard invites readers into a space of shared breath, radical empathy, and collective remembrance. It is a door flung open. A night under the stars. A home built from story. This is not just a collection—it’s a homecoming, a collective heartbeat, a defiant archive of what refuses to be erased.”
—Etaf Rum, author of Evil Eye

“What a gift we have in this gorgeous and significant anthology of Kurdish writing and what a sheer joy to read. Sharply and lovingly curated by Holly Mason Badra, this is a landmark collection of works from Kurdish writers representing a constellation of histories, positionalities, possibilities. The offerings here are astonishing in their beauty and inventiveness, framed by Badra’s keen and generous introduction. This book is a site for urgent collectivity, a welcoming home to Kurdish stories for Kurdish readers, and in its specificities, a window into the condition of being human. These vital words will stay with me.”
—Lana Salah Barkawi, Executive and Artistic Director of Mizna

“Sleeping in the Courtyard moved me in ways I didn’t expect. As a Kurdish woman, so much of what’s in these pages felt like home. Each piece carries the weight of memory, exile, and identity, but also the beauty of our language, our stories, our resilience. This collection doesn’t just speak to the Kurdish experience—it honours it. It’s raw, lyrical, and necessary. I’m proud to see these voices brought together, and I know they’ll stay with me for a long time. The title Sleeping in the Courtyard made me feel a sense of temporary refuge, a place that isn’t quite home, but holds a moment of safety, of reflection, and it took me back to sleeping in the courtyard back home during hot summer months.”
—Payzee Mahmod, Girl’s & Women’s Rights Campaigner

“Again and again the word ‘dreams’ emerges from the works in this collection. What else do 40 million people with no nation, no statehood, no citizenry have? So much, they have the words on these pages, the images and evocations that bring to life something far far bigger than country. Sleeping in the Courtyard is an important work in a time of border tensions, to show that it is not a country that keeps a people, but their imaginations, longings, and dreams.”
—Laleh Khadivi, author of The Kurdish Trilogy