This will be a bilingual Poetry Reading in Turkish and English from Zafer Şenocak's latest book, First Light (Zephyr Press, 2024)

Zafer Şenocak is a prolific Turkish-German poet, novelist, essayist and public intellectual, who has published more than 30 books over the past 40 years. Born in Turkey, Şenocak moved to Germany as a child, and has lived in Berlin as a freelance writer since 1989. He has written widely on issues of diversity in Germany, migration and exile, the Turkish diaspora, and the small distances and great fears of a globalizing Europe. Historical questions of mixed and broken identities are key to his novels, which utilize nonlinear modes of storytelling to emphasize the fragmented nature of memory. His writing includes poetry and novels in both German and Turkish, and he is a frequent contributor to nationwide German newspapers, like Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel and Die Welt. Şenocak’s work has been translated into English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Czech.

Şenocak has been a writer in residence at UC Berkeley, M.I.T., Oberlin College, Dartmouth College, and the University of Arizona. He is currently in residence at the University of Michigan during the Fall 2024 term. A volume of his German-language poems appeared in English translation as Door Languages in 2008 (trans. Elizabeth Oehlkers-Wright, Zephyr Press). And his essay collection "Atlas of a Tropical Germany" was edited and translated by Prof. Leslie A. Adelson in 2000 (Nebraska Press). Most recently, his Turkish-language poetry has been translated into English by UM Professor Kristin Dickinson, which appeared in a bilingual edition with Zephyr Press in 2024 under the title, First Light.

Zafer's visit is sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Max Kade Foundation.