Sleeping in the Courtyard

About

Sleeping in the Courtyard brings together historically isolated writers in community—and invites readers to join them around the table to share in their memories, secrets, tears, and joys. 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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Editor

Holly Mason Badra is a Kurdish-American writer. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews appear in Meridian, The Arkansas International, The Rumpus, CALYX, Circumference, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is currently the associate director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. She reads for Poetry Daily.

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Praise

“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

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Editor’s Note: On Transliteration and Spelling Choices

HAJJAR BABAN
Broken Ghazal with Words
In Another Dream Where My Father Apologizes

ZHAWEN SHALI
Yesterday
with the original Sorani Kurdish version
A Night with No Country
with the original Sorani Kurdish version

AVA HOMA
Excerpts from Daughters of Smoke and Fire

TRACY FUAD
Object Exercise
Jin-Jiyan-Azadî

JÎLA HUSEYNÎ
Question
with the original Sorani Kurdish version
When I Dream About You
with the original Sorani Kurdish version

MAHA HASSAN
Excerpt from In Anne Frank’s House

NARIN ROSTAM
Wrestling
with the original Sorani Kurdish version
Six Fingers in One Hand
with the original Sorani Kurdish version

GIAN SARDAR
Excerpts from Take What You Can Carry

HIVA PANAHI
Secrets of the Snow
A Poet Was Murdered

BAYAN NASIH
The Explorer Who Watched from a School Window

LEILA LOIS
Last Light
Tasseography

NAZAND BEGIKHANI
The War Was Over
A Child’s Painting

CHOMAN HARDI
Excerpt from Whispering Walls

PINAR BANU YAŞAR
Past and Future Selves Consider Language
The Relevant Parties

MERYEM RABIA UZUMCU
Family Rashomon

ROOZ MOHAMMED
Pages from the graphic novel Between Two Rivers

ESSMAT SOPHIE
Setar on the Mud Wall

NAHID ARJOUNI
My Roots Were Somewhere with You
Kitchen God

CKLARA MORADIAN
How Light Shines Through the Blue Vase on the Windowsill

LARENA AMIN
What I See in My Sleep, March Thirty
To My Friend Who’s Older Than Me

BALSAM KARAM
Event Horizon

MERAL ŞIMŞEK
I Was Woman
Dream and Reality

HOLLY MASON BADRA
Waiting
Qurban

HERO KURDA
Except for Poetry, Nothing Else Shields Me

Acknowledgments
Credits
Build Your Bookshelf
Contributors

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Events

May 14, 2025: Kramer’s Books, Washington, DC, 7:00pm (ET)

August 8, 2025: Politics & Prose – Connecticut Ave., Washington, DC, 7:00pm (ET)

August 23, 2025: Brookline Booksmith Transnational Series, Brookline, MA, 7:00pm (ET)

September 9, 2025: Montgomery County Middle Eastern American Advisory Group, Montgomery County Library, Virtual, 7:00pm (ET)
*Link coming soon

September 12, 2025: George Mason University, Fairfax, VA & Virtual 12:00pm (ET)

October 11, 2025: RAWIFest at University of Houston, TX, 10:30 (CDT)
*Link coming soon