Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur, Southern Turkey, 1982. She studied English Language/Literature at the University of Istanbul, and was awarded a Ph. D in 2016 for a thesis on Ekphrastic Poetry. She has published three books of poetry, many essays and critical articles to date. A selection of her poetry entitled “The Sea Within” was published in George Messo’s translation by Shearsman in 2011. Elif Verlag published her second book “Belki Sessiz” in Monika Carbe’s German in 2017. She has won many awards for her poetry, last December her 2019 collection “Bile İsteye” was awarded the Yunus Nadi Award for Poetry, one of the most prestigious Turkish literary prizes. Özmen has translated many poems and children’s books and is currently translating Sylvia Plath’s “Collected Poems”.