Author • Turkish literature

Leyla Ruhan Okyay

She was born in Alpullu, Kırklareli in 1952. She graduated from Faculty of Architecture, İstanbul Technical University. She worked on some city conservation projects of the same faculty’s History of Architecture and Restoration Institute; and completed her master’s degree in the same area. Following her first story book Gölgesi Güz (2000), she took on the coordination of the book titled Fırat’a Karışan Öyküler (2001), which tells the drama of the villages submerged under the waters of the Birecik Dam between Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa. Okyay’s story books Geyikli Orman (2003) and Çilesine Âşık (2010), which were included in many selections, attracted attention with their effective language. Okyay, with her pure narrative style, wrote many stories and participated in some anthologies. The most popular of those was published in 2006 and translated to German, gathering nineteen stories from Turkish authors together. In 2012, her childhood memories were published in her book named Yeşilköy: Bizim Köyden Trenler Geçer. Same year she wrote Wanderlust (Leylek Havada, 2012) for “Bridge Books” collection of Günışığı Kitaplığı and with this book, she received IBBY Turkey’s “Young Adult Novel of The Year 2012” award. Her story book Dream Girl (Hayal Kız, 2014) is about a child who is determined to follow her dreams, while her first children’s novel Cloud Dreamer (Bulut Delisi, 2017) shows that dreams can be seen as journeys. Her novel A Mess Not a House! (Ev Değil Çarşamba Pazarı, 2020), which welcomes the reader into a cheerful family, is followed by her latest novel Bennane’s Flying Chair (Bennane’nin Uçan Koltuğu, 2023) that is a gift for the 100^th anniversary of the Turkish Republic and contains the memories of a village institute teacher. Leyla Ruhan lives in İstanbul and has a daughter.