The Launch of KurdîLit

Although thus far it focuses only on Kurmanjî and Kurmanjkî, two dialects of Kurdish spoken in Turkey,  the KurdîLit project promises to expand to Soranî and Goranî, enlarging the research and information about Kurdish writers across several nations:

The newly launched website, officially launched at this year’s Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, “aims to bring together and digitally archive basic information regarding actors (writers, translators, publishers, and periodic literary publications).” It was designed by Diyarbakır Arts Center, Lîs Editions, and Literature Across Frontiers, an international literary and translation project currently celebrating its fifteenth anniversary.

According to the project website:

This project, which began in February 2016 to generate a website that aims to promote the visibility of literature produced in Kurmanjî and Kurmanjkî, not only in Turkey but also in the wider region and the international arena, therefore making contemporary Kurdish literature part of a larger communications network. Accordingly, the project consists of three basic steps: research, data collection, and mapping the information collected through interviews.

The website currently features a history of Kurdish literature in Kurmanjî and Kurmanjkî, writers and translators who work with the languages, information about Kurdish journals and magazines, as well as a blog.

You can find out more at www.kurdilit.net.