Founding Director
Marie is a poet, translator, and professor. She holds a PhD in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter. Her book-length works include Kajal Ahmed's Handful of Salt, Abdulla Pashew's Dictionary of Midnight, Selim Temo’s Nightlands, Farhad Pirbal’s The Potato Eaters, and Exile is Arrival, a landmark anthology of 19th century Kurdish poetry (2025). Her writing has appeared in Poetry, Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, Plume, Epiphany, The Iowa Review, and Words Without Borders. She served as the Founding Director of Slemani’s UNESCO City of Literature. She was a 2022 NEA Fellow, the first ever working from the Kurdish.

Director of Special Projects
Sarwar received his Bachelors degree in Business Administration from the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) in 2019. After beginning at Kashkul as a staff translator and researcher, he then served two years as both Kashkul’s Assistant Director and Slemani’s City Liaison to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, coordinating local and global arts initiatives. In 2022, having received the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office’s Chevening Scholarship, he graduated his Masters degree in Arts Policy and Management at Birbeck, University of London.

Social Media and Events Coordinator
Sara earned her B.A. in Information Technology and minor in Business Management from the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) in 2017. Upon graduating, Sara worked as the AUIS Social Sciences Department TA from 2017 to 2019, when she began work as a vocational trainer for a nonprofit organization to help young Kurds, Iraqis, and Syrians find jobs. She is a certified National Trainer from the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Financial Education.

Translator
Managing Editor,
Kashkul Books
Jiyar speaks Kurdish, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Persian. His translations have appeared in publications such as World Literature Today, Literary Hub, Your Impossible Voice, Periódico de Poesía, Círculo de Poesía, Buenos Aires Poetry, and Revista POESIA. His book-length translations include works by Juan Carlos Onetti, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Farhad Pirbal and Sherzad Hassan. In addition to his work at Kashkul, he serves as an editor for the literary magazine Îlyan.