Ava Homa is the author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire, a novel weaving together fifty years of modern Kurdish history. She is an activist and journalist and holds an MA in English and creative writing from the University of Windsor in Canada. Her collection of short stories about modern Iranian women, Echoes from the Other Land, was nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Prize, and she is the inaugural recipient of the PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-In-Exile Scholarship. You can connect with her at www.avahoma.com.