Ava Homa

Award-winning transnational author & speaker

Ava Homa is the author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire (HarperCollins & Abrams), a novel that traces the coming of age of a Kurdish woman under state repression. The book was selected for Roxane Gay’s Book Club, received the 2020 Nautilus Silver Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. It was named among the year’s notable books by The Wall Street Journal, The Independent (UK), and The Globe and Mail (Canada), and is taught in universities across North America, including George Mason University, the University of Toronto, and Southern Methodist University.

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Her story collection, Echoes from the Other Land, was nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her forthcoming poetry collection, Octopus Alchemy, is a finalist for the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize.

Her essays and criticism have appeared in outlets including the BBC, Literary Review of Canada, Literary Hub, and open Democracy. She has spoken internationally on literature, freedom of expression, and the ethics of witness, including at the United Nations in Geneva.

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Ava holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Windsor and teaches creative writing at California State University, Monterey Bay. She is a 2023–24 California Arts Council Fellow.

She also teaches Sufi literary traditions, including the poetry of Rumi, at both California State University, Monterey Bay and San Francisco State University. She is a 2023–24 California Arts Council Fellow.

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Alongside her fiction, essays, and poetry, she writes on Sufi thought and the inner architecture of awakening. She is currently at work on a nonfiction book on Rumi and the seven stages of awakening in the Sufi tradition and publishes ongoing reflections on literature and contemplative traditions on Substack.