Murat Özyaşar (b. 1979) was born in Diyarbakır in southeastern Turkey and graduated from Dicle University’s Department of Turkish Language and Literature. Read More His first collection of fiction, Ayna Çarpması (Mirror Shock), won the Haldun Taner Short Story Award in 2008 and the Yunus Nadi Short Story Award in 2009, while his second collection, Sarı Kahkaha (Yellow Laughter), won the International Balkanika Literary Award in 2016. The present piece is from his 2019 collection, Aslı Gibidir: Diyabakır Hikâyeleri (Certified Copy: Diyarbakır Tales). His books have been translated into French, Kurdish, and Persian.