Dina GUDYM has worked in television and film in Almaty, and now is a creative director for an advertising agency. She has worked and written for the Kazakhstan editions of both Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. Her novel, Colon With a Bracket, was long-listed for the Russian Debut Prize, 2007. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.

Ainur KARIM Айнур Карим (playwright; Kazakhstan), a lawyer by training, has won national and international awards for her first play What’s Up, Class 5-B?; The Passport, about political protests in Kazakhstan, was shortlisted for the Lyubimovka Drama Festival (Russia) and its English translation won the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition. Additionally, Karim writes for the screen, edits, and translates between Russian and Kazakh. She participates thanks to a grant from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. 

Anna ROGOZHNIKOVA is the IWP’s first writer from Kazakhstan. She studied Russian philology at Almaty State University and English philology at the Kazakh State University of Foreign Languages. She is an editor at Cosmo Kazakhstan magazine, and contributes short stories to Apolinary magazine. She participates courtesy of the US Department of State.

Yuriy SEREBRIANSKY Юрий Серебрянский (fiction writer, journalist; Kazakhstan) is the editor-in-chief of Esquire Kazakhstan, the editor of the Polish diaspora magazine Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny, and the author of five volumes of prose and poetry. His novel [Destination. Road Pastoral] won the Russkaya Premia for best short prose in 2010; the novel [Prazhaki] won the same award in 2014. His [Kazakhstani Fairy Tales] won an award at the 2017 Silk Roads Book Fair. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Aigerim TAZHI Айгерим Тажи (poet; Kazakhstan) is the author of the volumes of poetry БОГ-О-СЛОВ [THEO-LOG-IAN] and Paper-Thin Skin/Бумажная кожа (2019), published  in a bilingual edition by Zephyr Press with support by an NEA Translation Fellowship, and appeared among Year’s Most Notable Translations by World Literature Today. Her poems have been widely published in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., translated into many languages, and received international literary prizes. She is the author of projects at the crossroads of poetry and other forms of art. Her participation was made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.