Nazand Begikhani

Bells of Speech was her first collection in English published by Ambit (London 2006). Two of her poetry collections have been translated into French, Couleur de Sable (2011) and Le Lendemain d'Hier (2013). She has also translated works of Baudelaire and T. Eliot into Kurdish. Her works in English and French have been published by the Poetry Magazine, Ambit magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Exiled Writers' Ink, Action Poétique, etc. Her poetry collections have been translated into many other languages, including Arabic, Persian, German, and Spanish. Also an active advocate of human rights and helped establish a number of activist-based networks, studies centers and feminist campaigns, including Kurdish Women Action against Honour Killing (KWAHK), later changed to Kurdish Women's Rights Watch (KWRW) and gender-related studies centers in Kurdistan. She has provided expert advice on honour-based violence (HBV) to a number of government bodies, including Sweden, UK and Kurdistan. Between 2007 and 2009, she sat on the board of the High Commission to Monitor Violence Against Women in Kurdistan Region and participated, as an expert witness and independent observer, in its seasonal meetings. In 2010, with colleagues from the University of Bristol, she established the pioneering Gender and Violence Studies Centre at the University of Sulaimaniya (now Gender Equality Center), a two-year project funded by the British Council. She currently advises the Kurdistan President on higher education and gender in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). She has integrated the concept of gender into the KRI's curriculum with the aiming to develop feminist research and produce evidence-based knowledge on SGBV to inform policy and practice. Her work has had considerable influence on action and strategy to address HBV in Kurdistan. She publishes academic work and poetry in Kurdish, English and French. Begikhani has worked with the Kurdish Institute of Paris, the Kurdish Cultural Centre in London, the BBC BBC Monitoring, the University of Bristol as senior research fellow and Le Monde Diplomatique as editor in chief of the Kurdish edition. Begikhani has won several international prizes for her work and activities, including the UK Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize for her work combating honor crimes (2000) and the French Simone Landrey Feminine Poetry Prize (2012) for her poetry work, Kurdish Gender Equality Prize (2015). In 2017, she was awarded French Honorary Citizenship by the City of Chateaux-Renault.

• Name — Nazand Begikhani • Occupation — Poet, Academic researcher, Human rights advocate • Language — Kurdish, English, French, Arabic and Persian • Citizenship — British/French • Education — Sorbonne University • Period — 1990s–present • Genre — Poetry, academic research, advocacy • Subject — Sexual and Gender-based violence, Literature, poetry • Movement — Feminism, Human rights activism • Notable Works — Bells of Speech, Colour of Sand, Yesterday of Tomorrow • Awards — Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize, Simone Landrey's Feminine Poetry Prize, French Honorary Citizenship, Kurdistan Gender Equality Price, 2015 • Years Active — 1995–present • Website — nazand-begikhani.com

• Yesterday of Tomorrow, Collection of Poetry, Association of Kurdish Artists in France, Paris, 1995. • Celebrations, Collection of Poetry, Aras, Iraqi Kurdistan, 2004. • Colour of Sand, Collection of Poetry with Dilawar Qaradaghi, Aras, Iraqi Kurdistan, 2005. • Bells of Speech, Ambit Books Publishers, London, 64 pp., 2006. (English) • Bells of Speech, Collected Poems, Ranj Publishers, Sulaimaniya, 2007.(Kurdish) • Love: An inspired Absence, Poetry Collection, Ranj Publishesrs, Sulaimaniya, 2008 • Ranin Al-kalam, Translation of collected poems Bells of Speech into Arabic by Qays Qaradaghi and Muhammad Afif al-Hussaini, Dar Al-jamal, Lebanon, 2011 • Couleur de Sables, translation of Colour of Sand into French by Shakour Bayz and Bertrand Foly, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2011 • "Le Lendemain d'Hier". Translated by Nicole Barriere and Claude Ber with the cooperation the author, Les Amandiers, 2013. • 'A Promenade with John Donne', Ghazalnus Publishers, Tehran, 2017. • 'Oeuvres Completes of Nazand Begikhani's Poetry', Mang Publishers, Tehran, 2019. • One Day You Will Become a Willow (Nusyar, Danemark, 2024).