My name is Aydin Akgün and I am a novelist and a poet. I was born and raised in Izmir, Turkey. I graduated from the Lycée Saint Joseph in Izmir and moved to the United States in 1995. I received my B.A. in both International Relations and French from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2000, and my M.A. in Creative Writing in both poetry and fiction from Johns Hopkins University in 2009. I live and work in Washington D.C. Some of my poems have been published in several literary journals — The Chicago Literary Review, The Potomac Review, Curating Alexandria, and Hotel Amerika.