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Ava Homa
Lecturer Faculty; College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Highest degree
MA in English and Creative Writing
Expertise
Communications; creative writing and social action; Kurdish affairs with a focus on Iran, Iraq and Syria; Kurdish women’s movement; Iranian women’s movement; human rights in Iran
Relevant bio
Ava Homa is an acclaimed author, speaker, and faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her debut novel, Daughters of Smoke and Fire (HarperCollins & Abrams, 2020) gained widespread acclaim, was featured in Roxane Gay's Book Club, and secured a spot among the "best books" of the year in outlets like the Wall Street Journal, the Independent (UK) and Globe and Mail (Canada). It received the 2020 Nautilus Silver Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2022 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. A pioneering novel in English by a Kurdish woman, Daughters of Smoke and Fire has been integrated into university curricula at institutions such as George Mason University, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Toronto.
Her collection of short stories, Echoes from the Other Land, was nominated for the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her essays, written in English, Kurdish, and Persian, have been published in outlets like the BBC, Literary Review of Canada, Open Democracy, and Literary Hub. Her work has been anthologized across the U.S., the UK, and Canada.
A native of Kurdistan, Iran, Ava holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Windsor in Canada. She has delivered speeches across North America and Europe, including at the United Nations in Geneva. Ava has been featured in interviews on national and international media as she continues her work on a global scale.