Zêdan Xelef was born on Shingal Mountain in northern Iraq in 1995. Displaced from his home by the Islamic State’s attempt to exterminate the Êzîdî, he arrived with his family to the Chamishko IDP camp in late 2014. He studied translation at the University of Duhok, and his current projects include translating Whitman’s "Song of Myself" into Kurmanji and a selection of poets from Rojava into English. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming on Harriet (Poetry Foundation), as well as in the Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today Online, and Poetry London. He recently moved to Sulaimani to work for Kashkul, the center for art and culture at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.