Jan Dost

Jan Dost is a Syrian Kurdish writer, born in Kobani, near Aleppo, Syria, in 1966. He studied Natural Sciences at Aleppo University and, since 1986, has worked as a journalist and editor. He has also translated a number of books into Arabic and Kurdish. Having written poetry since childhood, he has published four poetry collections and 16 novels, some of which are also available in Farsi, Italian, Spanish and Turkish. In 2000, he emigrated to Germany and obtained German nationality. He has won several prizes, including the 2012 Cegerxwin Award given at the Kurdish Poetry Festival held in Essen, Germany, and the Sharafnama Prize awarded in Vienna in 2022. He has worked as a translator for Bamf and at refugee shelters in Germany. He is editor-in-chief of the monthly Kurdistan Bilarabi magazine published in Erbil, Iraq.