Tahir Hamut Izgil, author portrait
© Mattéo Deneux

Tahir Hamut Izgil

Tahir Hamut Izgil is one of the foremost poets writing in Uyghur. He grew up in Kashgar, attended college in Beijing, and worked as a film director in the Uyghur region. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. In 2024, he was awarded the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent by the Human Rights Foundation. He lives near Washington, DC.
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

Books

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

Books for World Refugee Day

We are sharing books for World Refugee Day on June 20th to bring light to the struggles refugees currently face. By sharing the individual stories of refugees whose lives have been dismantled and who have moved beyond catastrophic circumstances, we hope to inspire education on how to contribute to creating a world in which people

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FROM THE PAGE: An excerpt from Tahir Hamut Izgil’s Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is a poet’s account of one of the world’s most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family’s escape from genocide.   One A Phone Call from Beijing I keep returning to the first day of 2013. That evening, I received an unexpected call from Ilham Tohti,

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