Refugee 33,333: Selected Poems

Farhad Pirbal is a Kurdish writer, philosopher, singer, poet, painter and critic. He was born in the city of Erbil in Southern Kurdistan. He studied Kurdish language and literature in the University of Salahadin in Hewler. In 1986, he left Kurdistan to France, where he continued his studies in University of Sorbonne in the field of Kurdish literature. After going back to Southern Kurdistan, in 1994, he established the Sharafkhan Badlisi cultural center.Pshtiwan Babakr is a filmmaker, curator, and translator who has served as the archivist for visual arts at Kashkul, the center for arts and culture at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, and has directed and produced several documentaries, including Red Land and Not for Sale. His translations can be found in World Literature Today, On the Seawall, Loch Raven Review, and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars.Shook is a poet and translator. Since living in Slemani for two years, they have co-translated over a dozen Kurdish writers into English and Spanish. Today they direct Kashkul Books, a multilingual publishing project based in South Kurdistan. Their recent translations include a Spanish-language edition of Refugee Number 33,333 (Gato Negro Ediciones, co-translated by Jiyar Homer) and Conceicao Lima's No Gods Live Here (Phoneme).