Ava Homa

Ava Homa is a Toronto-based Kurdish fiction writer and university lecturer. She was born and educated in Iran, where her father— for the crime of possessing banned books— endured both imprisonment and torture. Homa, who writes in English, is author of the short story collection, Echoes from the Other Land (2010) and the debut novel Daughters of Smoke and Fire (2020). Her short story collection was nominated for the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Award, the world’s largest monetary short story prize, and also came in sixth in the Reader’s Choice contest of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) for the Giller Prize, Canada’s leading short story prize. Selected for PEN Canada’s Writers-in-Exile Program, Homa also served as 2013 writer-in-residence at Vancouver’s Kogawa House, a literary arts center based in the historic home of leading Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. Homa’s writings have appeared in the Literary Review of Canada, Windsor Review, and Toronto Star.