Author • Turkish literature

İrem Uşar

She was born in Istanbul, in 1975. After graduating from Notre Dame de Sion High School, she studied Radio, Television, Cinema at Marmara University. She worked as a reporter, editor and script writer. In 2010, she participated in a writing workshop in Antwerp, Belgium, with the invitation of PEN, and wrote her first children’s book The Light That Moved from the Light House (Fenerden Taşınan Işık, 2011) published by Günışığı Kitaplığı. The book was part of a special project coordinated by Günışığı for Sivrice Lighthouse near Assos, Turkey. She gained recognition with her heartwarming family stories in Lambkin and the Funfair Family (Kuuzu ve Lunapark Ailesi, 2011), which received the special jury award in the Best Children’s Book of 2011 selections of IBBY Turkey. She became well-known for her children’s novel Latashiba: Between Two Cities (Lataşiba: İki Kentin Arasında, 2013) that explores opposites. For the picture book The Kid Searching for Her Sleep (Uykusunu Arayan Çocuk, 2016), she collaborated with the illustrator Merve Atılgan. Her young adult novel Witchgrass (Ayrıkotu, 2008) was published with its revised version, which was named Me, witchgrass (Ben Ayrıkotu) in 2015 by ON8. Following the children’s novel Topsy Turvy Straight Lines (Düz Çizgi Tepetaklak, 2018) that makes one think about the monotony of human life, she wrote the fantasy book for children BALTI: The Incomplete World (Eksik Dünya BALTI, 2020), and Ali Against Cavid The Virus (Ali, Cavid’e Karşı, 2020), the story of a child learning to resist the pandemic with the power of science. Her latest novel, titled FarWoods (AşrıOrman, 2023), focuses on children confronting with the secrets of a treeless country. The author, who has been practicing tai chi for years, lives in Istanbul with her dog Luka.