Making Literature Travel

Müge Gürsoy Sökmen is an editor, translator and co-founder of Metis Publications (founded 1982). She has commissioned and prepared for publication hundreds of books, both fiction and non-fiction, by local and international authors, acting as the commissioning editor and foreign rights manager of the company. She has been a member of the editorial board of translation journal Metis Çeviri and of Defter, a critical thought quarterly. She has contributed to the organisation of many seminars, conferences and symposiums relevant to her editorial work. She is the editor of World Tribunal on Iraq: Making the Case Against War (Metis, Turkey, 2006 and Olive Branch Press, USA, 2008) and co-editor of Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said (Autumn 2008 by Metis, Turkey, and in Summer 2008 by Verso, UK). She has chaired the Writers in Prison Committee of Turkish PEN for many years and has acted as a peace and freedom-of-expression activist for over twenty years. Sökmen is a member of the Turkish Publishers Association, Turkish PEN and Alliance of Independent Publishers for an Alternative Globalisation. She co-chaired the Organising Committee Guest of Honour Turkey Frankfurt Book Fair 2008.