Gonca Özmen (Burdur, 1982) holds an MA and PhD in English Language & Literature from Istanbul University. She published her first poem in 1997, at just fifteen, in Turkey’s oldest literary journal, Varlık. She received the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Youth Prize that same year, followed three years later by her first book, Kuytumda. Her poems won several major awards, including the Ali Rıza Ertan Prize (1999), the Orhon Murat Arıburnu Prize (2000), and the Berna Moran Poetry Prize (2003). She received the Homeros Criticism Prize (2005) for her essay on the famous Turkish poet Edip Cansever. Her second poetry book, Belki Sessiz, was released by the major publishing house YKY in 2008. The Sea Within, based largely on Belki Sessiz, was the first full-length selection of her work to appear in English (George Messo (translator), Shearsman Books, 2011). Belki Sessiz was translated, in its entirety, into German, under the title Vielleicht Lautlos (Monica Carbe (translator), Elif Verlag, 2017). Özmen’s poems were also translated into Farsi, French, Italian, Romanian, Slovenian, and Spanish. In 2014, she was invited by Udruga Kurs to do an artist residency in Split (Croatia) as a guest poet. She serves on the advisory board of the Bursa Nilüfer International Poetry Festival and the journal Turkish Poetry Today, published annually by Red Hand Books (England). She was among the founding editors of Turkey’s premier translation journal, Çevirmenin Notu (Translator’s Note), and is currently an editor of Çevrimdışı Istanbul. A member of the Three Seas Writers’ and Translators’ Council (Rhodes, Greece), Özmen has participated in international poetry readings in Berlin, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Lodeve, Medana, Paris, and Priština. In addition to her poetry, Özmen is involved in academic research. Her areas of interest include contemporary poetry and poetics, ekphrasis, translation studies, literary criticism, film studies (esp., literary adaptation), feminist theory, body politics, gender and sexuality. She has lived in Istanbul since 2000.