I am sick with a literary virus: my mother tongue is my refuge

Biography

Firat Cewerî is a writer, editor and innovator of modern Kurdish literature, born in 1959 in Turkish Kurdistan, in Derik, a district and municipality in the province of Mardin, whose name in Kurdish is: Dêrika Çiyayê Mazî (“Mount Mazi’s Derik,” or “Mount Mazi’s Church”).
He began writing poetry in Kurdish as a teenager, when he was 16 and 17. In the early 1970s he moved with his family to Nişebin (Nusaybin), where he soon joined the revolutionary movement, founded a cultural association with some of his friends, and over the years also developed his writing in Kurdish.

Firat Cewerî left the country in 1980 with the goal of writing freely and settled in Sweden. In the same year he published his first book and became involved in Kurdish literary movements and activities. In the early 1980s he contributed his writings and stories to Kurdish magazines around the world. He began publishing the magazine Nudem (“New Times”) in March 1992 and published it for ten years without interruption: Nudem played an important role in the development of Kurdish literature and encouraged many new writers.

Cewerî founded the Nûdem publishing house and published a special translation magazine called NÜDEM WERGER, devoted exclusively to translations of world literature into Kurdish. He also reassembled HAWAR magazine, which is the foundation of modern Kurdish literature, and published it in two volumes.

Firat Cewerî’s novels and short stories have been translated into Swedish, German, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Sorani dialect (Iraqi Kurdish variant) and included in German, Swedish, Arabic and Turkish anthologies, as well as being read on Swedish public radio.
He has so far written five novels entitled Late Payza, I Will Kill Someone (“The Fool, the Harlot and the Writer”), Lehi, Mary was an Angel and Derza hile min, and is closely followed in both the Kurdish and Turkish literary worlds.

Firat Cewerî has been a member of the Swedish Writers’ Association since 1987 and has been a board member of the Swedish P.E.N. (Poets, Essayists, Novelists), chairman of the Exile Committee.
In spring 2023 he was guest editor for the Swedish magazine “PEN/Opp”: it is an international online magazine founded in 2011 by the Swedish P.E.N. with the aim of giving space to writers and journalists who aren’t allowed to publish in their home countries. Today it’s a unique platform to discuss freedom of expression, literature, culture and politics from a global perspective.

In 2018, Firat Cewerî was awarded the Swedish Academy Prize for Translation of Swedish Literature. In 2020 he was awarded the Golden Pen Award by the Minister of Culture of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Swedish Academy awarded Firat Cewerî, along with Italian Massimo Ciaravolo, the Swedish Academy Prize for the Introduction of Swedish Culture Abroad for the year 2023.

Firat Cewerî still lives in Sweden and continues his literary work there.

Award motivation

Firat Cewerî receives the International Prize 2024 for his commitment and determination to promote in all its richness the use of his language, Kurdish, particularly in its version spoken in Turkey, Kurmanji.
In a historical, cultural and political context, such as Kurdish context, in which defense of one’s language from attempt to annihilate it by ruling powers constitutes a fundamental factor in preservation of one’s individual and collective identity, Firat Cewerî has devoted his entire activity and commitment to his language, writing and publishing poems, short stories and novels in Kurdish, working on the translation of world literature into Kurdish, and working assiduously on the promotion of Kurdish-language publishing. His books have been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Persian, Arabic and Italian.
His dedication to writing poetry in Kurdish drove him out of his own country: at that time, writing in Kurdish was strictly forbidden in Turkey, while in Sweden a vibrant community of exiled Kurdish intellectuals had formed. But even while in exile, Firat Cewerî never stopped caring about the Kurdish people in Turkey, and he always contributed to the development of their knowledge of their own language and literature.