Sevgi Soysal (1936-1976) was born in Istanbul. Her work is inspired by her childhood in Ankara, youth and student movements in Turkey, revolutionary dreams, and experiences of leftist intellectuals in prison and in exile. In 1974, Soysal won the prestigious Orhan Kemal Award for Best Novel for Noontime in Yenisehir, which she wrote while in prison. Dawn was published in 1975, a beautiful thematic companion to her memoirs of prison life, which were originally published in the newspaper Politika and published in a single volume as Yildirim Area Women's Ward in 1976. She wrote a brilliant set of endearing and illuminating story collections, novels, and memoirs over the course of her short life. Soysal died at the age of 40 of cancer. She left behind an incomplete novel, Welcome, Death!

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Maureen Freely is a writer, translator, senior lecturer at Warwick University. Translator of five books by Orhan Pamuk, Fethiye Cetin's My Grandmother, and - with Alexander Dawe - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar's The Time Regulation Institute and Sait Faik Abasiyanik's A Useless Man, she is active in various campaigns to champion free expression. She has been a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, and The Sunday Times for two decades. Her novels include Sailing through Byzantium, Enlightenment, Angry in Piraeus, and The Other Rebecca.