© Khasraw HamakarimBachtyar Ali //
The Stanford Humanities Center invites Bachtyar Ali as a resident from early April to early May 2025.
The aim of these month-long residencies is to bring high-level international scholars into the intellectual life of Stanford.
The SHC promotes provocative discussions, the exchange of ideas across languages and cultures, and continual, rigorous reflection on how knowledge is made. It sponsors advanced research in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences by investing in experiences—fellowships, workshops, lectures, and other events—that enrich knowledge in and across the disciplines. Through a partnership with the renowned Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), the Humanities Center embraces emerging digital methods to complement traditional kinds of analysis and interpretation. Together, the Stanford Humanities Center and CESTA serve as the hub of an international network of fellows, visiting scholars, students, and alumni.
SHC states: Bachtyar Ali, a Kurdish Novelist, Literary Critic, and Poet, is “one of the most prominent contemporary intellectuals from Iraqi Kurdistan. His novels have been translated into Persian, Arabic, Turkish, German, Italian, French and English, a renown very few authors writing in the Kurdish language enjoy. He has written nearly 40 books, including 12 novels, as well as a number of essay books and collections of poetry. In 2017, he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize in Germany, joining past recipients such as Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood and Javier Marías. He is the first author writing in a non-European language to do so. In March 2024 he was honored with the prestigious German award Hilde Domin Prize for literature in exile. He lives in Cologne, Germany.Bachtyar Ali was nominated by the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.”
