Aysel Özakın


Aysel Ingham is a Turkish-British novelist and playwright. She has written predominantly in English for over 25 years, although she has also published in three other languages. She also publishes under the names Ada, Anna, or Ana Ingham.

Career

Özakın was born in Şanlıurfa and studied French in Ankara and in Paris, then worked as a lecturer in Istanbul. Her literary activity was repeatedly praised by literary critics. One example of her sensitive, accurate observational prose is a 1975 Turkish language novel under the title Gurbet Yavrum, which was translated to German in 1987, under the title The Flying Carpet.
Three months after the 1980 Turkish military coup, Aysel Özakın left Turkey to attend the :de:Literarisches Colloquium Berlin|Berlin Literary Colloquium.
Özakin considers herself a universalist writer, whose subject matter and protagonists are increasingly international. Through her work, she has striven to cast off any stereotypical labels that would typically have been placed on her as a female author who works in a multitude of languages, and with characters set within a variety of cultural backdrops.

Personal life

She met her future husband, the English painter and sculptor Bryan Ingham, in Worpswede, Germany. Özakın moved to Cornwall, England in 1988 to escape the limitations of publishing in Germany, and married him in 1989. They lived together there until their separation in 1994, remaining on friendly terms. She has resided in England since then, and writes her works solely in English.

Awards