Leylâ İpekçi

Leylâ İpekçi — Biography

Leylâ İpekçi is a journalist and author who rose from Turkey's magazine and newspaper world to become known for her columns, essays and novels; she has also worked as a screenwriter. She entered the literary scene in 1998 with the novel Maya and consolidated her standing with awards in later years. She is the niece of the journalist Abdi İpekçi and graduated from Saint Michel French High School and the Boğaziçi University sociology department.

She began her career in the mid-1980s as a reporter for monthly magazines such as Kadınca and Adam and weeklies such as Aktüel and Tempo. She was managing editor of Rapsodi in 1993, an editor at Aktüel in 1994-95 and editor-in-chief of Esquire in 1995. She then moved to column writing: for Radikal until early 2006, then Zaman, and from June 2008 the column "Saatler" in Taraf; she returned to Zaman in 2011 and left it at the end of 2013. Today she writes for Yeni Şafak and the magazines İtibar and Muhit.

Her books include İlk Kötülük, Başkası Olduğun Yer, Bir Sevgili Gibi Yaşamak, Aşk, Gecenin İkinci Rüyası and Ateş ve Bahçe. Maya won first place in Milliyet Sanat's "First Book First Edition" contest in 1998; the Turkish Writers' Union named her Author of the Year in 2007, Gecenin İkinci Rüyası won ESKADER's Best Book of the Year award in the essay category in 2011, and Güzelin 1001 Yüzü took the union's award in the ideas category in 2015. She married the director Semih Kaplanoğlu in 1999.