Future Book: The Kurdish Princess

Starting in 1997, I became engaged with the Kurdish diaspora when I befriended a Kurdish family that had just arrived in northern Virginia. From 2003-2004, I took a full year of Sorani Kurdish at a Kurdish center in Washington DC, then traveled to Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan for three weeks in July 2004 to research what I planned would be a young adult novel about Kurds. The photo with this description is of Dohuk, one of the cities I stayed in. 

The premise centers on an American girl who meets a group of Kurdish immigrants who are having a rough time fitting into the high school she attends. As she gets to know Zin - the most obstreperous of the Kurdish teens - and Zin’s friends, she begins to understand the difficult history of the world’s largest ethnic group without their own country. A chance trip the American girl takes to Turkey turns into a cloak-and-daggar visit to Iraqi Kurdistan and daring rescue mission to find Zin’s long-lost (and kidnapped) younger brother. 

I’ve been working on this story for years but 2020 is the year to tie up all the loose ends and get this book to an agent, then a publisher. All leads are welcome!