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--The Gulf Today (UAE)

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Amanda Coffin
Ana Carolina Fletes
Anastasia M. Ashman
Annie Prior Ozsarac
Catherine Salter Bayar
Catherine Yigit
Claire Uhr
Dana Gonzalez
Dena Sukaya
Diane Caldwell
Eppie Lunsford

Erica Kaya
Eveline Zoutendijk
Jennifer Eaton Gokmen
Jessica Lutz

Karen-Claire Voss

Katherine Belliel
Kathleen Hamilton Gundogdu
Louise Ruskin
Mahira Afridi-Perese
Maria Yarbrough Orhon
Maureen Basedow
Nancy Lunsford
Natalie Baker

Pat Yale
Rhonda Vander Sluis
Sally Green
Susan Fleming Holm
Tanala OsaYande
Trici Venola
Valerie Tasiran
Wendy Fox

Amanda Coffin

AMANDA COFFIN grew up in coastal Maine, moving just a bit South to complete a fascinating and impractical degree in Linguistics from Wellesley College. She drifted into a technology career which amused her for twenty years. That was enough. Now she lives a foot-loose life overseas and revels in her uprootedness. She has paused in Southeast Asia at the moment, catching up on her reading, knitting, painting, and wandering. Raising llamas in Chile are still on her to-do list, unchecked.

ANA CAROLINA FLETES was born and raised in Guatemala until the age of seven when her family emigrated to the United States. At seventeen, she came to Turkey as an exchange student at the French-language high school Galatasaray. She studied political sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Ana married a Turk and lived in Istanbul for six years, where her Turkish mother-in-law, an erudite television and radio personality, taught her to speak Turkish with an unrivalled accent. Currently she lives in San Francisco and works for a Latino Contemporary art gallery. She hopes to make films about women in the Middle East.

A four year resident of İstanbul, American ANNIE PRIOR OZSARAC and her Turkish husband Koray teach English at The Koc School, where they met and fell in love. Originally a native of Washington State, she spent two years teaching in Guatemala where that South American country’s black magic mysticism, especially a god of death and fertility named Maximon, failed to influence her beliefs. Joining a Turkish family has changed that, as she learned to respect the power of an evil eye exorcism.  She can now be heard whispering to herself, “masallah,” or ‘may God protect you’, upon seeing beautiful babies and witnessing the good luck of others.

Ever since her first international trip at age fourteen unaccompanied by parents, traveling the world has been a life goal of CATHERINE SALTER BAYAR. She developed her skills as a designer just for the opportunity to spend time observing cultures in faraway places. A childhood in Santa Barbara, California gave her an appreciation for balmy climates and Mediterranean architecture, so she quickly felt at home in Turkey. Catherine and her husband own a vintage textile shop in the Aegean town of Selcuk, where they now travel the world vicariously through the visitors they meet.

A native of Dublin, Ireland, CATHERINE YIGIT met her Turkish husband, Ozcan, while studying economic geology at Colorado School of Mines in the United States.  Her first experience of Turkey was the wild and wonderful Eastern Black Sea region from where her husband hails, a land of hazelnuts, lonely monasteries hidden in the steep mountains and a warm and generous people.  Living for three years in Canakkale in Northwest Turkey, just North of mythical Troy, she writes in snatches while her daughter, Ezgi Orla, sleeps.

Twenty-nine-year-old Australian CLAIRE UHR was sitting in her London office one afternoon in 2002 contemplating life when she decided to change it all.  Opening a map of the world on her computer screen, she closed her eyes and blindly pointed. Turkey. Two weeks later she arrived, with one hundred dollars to her name and a desire for adventure. Now back in her native Brisbane, she was an English teacher, a carpet salesperson, a hotel travel desk clerk, a tout at the harbor and a tour guide. She has lived in Selcuk, Kusadasi, Goreme, Istanbul and Ankara.

A former public relations professional from the United States, DANA GONZALEZ and her American husband have lived overseas since 1996, half that time spent in Estonia and half in Turkey.  Enamored of Turkish culture, she admits to a certain amount of joy in the mysteries of the country remaining unsolved.  Dana has taught English at Bilgi University in Istanbul.

American DENA SUKAYA, her Turkish husband Galip, and sons Aclan and Ceyhan have been visiting Turkey since the 1980s and lived in Istanbul for six years. She opened a Grand Bazaar shopping service for expatriates based on the friend-of-a-friend network, a distinctly Turkish resource and recommendation method. Currently in Seattle, Dena manages her business, the Ottoman Trading Company.  She plans to retire someday to the family tangerine farm outside Izmir, but will surely maintain a pied à terre in Istanbul, close to the Grand Bazaar.

DIANE CALDWELL's primal language is dance. She has performed and choreographed throughout the U.S.  Diane began writing poetry at the age of fourteen and ran away from her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at sixteen to hang out with the Beat poets of New York City. She has been writing ever since and her works have been published in New York, and in Seattle where she lived for twenty-two years before moving to Turkey. In Seattle, Diane worked as a professional actress for twelve years, followed by a decade as a psycho-therapist. She plans to spend her next ten years in Istanbul, teaching English, writing about her experiences, and dancing to Gypsy music.

An armchair traveler and cultural enthusiast long before she stepped foot on foreign soil, to experience the diversity of other cultures ERICA KAYA joined the Indian Student’s Association while studying computer science at University of Tennessee Knoxville.  Meeting and marrying her Turkish husband Baris gave her the chance to see new worlds firsthand. Living in Istanbul since 2002, Erica enjoys unravelling Turkey’s idea of the feminine, as well as her own.

Dutchwoman EVELINE ZOUTENDIJK owned and managed the Sarnic Hotel from May 2002 to November 2007. During those years she found establishing a business in Turkey to be both a challenge and an adventure. She is currently penning a collection of hotel stories similar to her Expat Harem contribution. A Cordon Bleu-trained chef, Eveline currently teaches Turkish cooking to foreign visitors and expatriates in half-day classes at her charming new restaurant in Sultanahmet, "Cooking Alaturka".

After studying Turkish literature and history at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, JESSICA LUTZ moved to Istanbul fifteen years ago, where her first job was to found the cultural department of the Dutch Consulate-General.  She has worked as a freelance journalist in Turkey, the Middle East and the Caucasus. When in Baghdad, four months pregnant and war pending, she decided to slow down and settle permanently in Istanbul. The native of Holland is also a novelist and short story writer, with works appearing in American and Dutch media. Her first book, De Gouden Appel, about Turkey, was published in the Netherlands and sold out within a year.

KAREN-CLAIRE VOSS studied at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne.  Past-president of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region, she taught at San Jose State University from 1985-1991.  Translator of Romanian physicist Basarab Nicolescu's Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity (SUNY, 2002) and his Poetical Theorems, and
author of numerous scholarly and popular articles, she has lived in İstanbul for almost thirteen years, where she has taught at Bogazici University and Fatih University.  Now dividing her time between Turkey and Scotland, work in progress includes two books:  Spiritual Alchemy: A Way of Being in the World and 'Feminine' Gnosis: An Other Way of Knowing.

After having studied music for two years at an Ohio university, a chance meeting with a Turkish man changed KATHERINE BELLIEL’s life and prompted her to earn her degree in History from Eastern Michigan University. Katherine left her native city of Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2003 for an exciting new life in Istanbul where she currently resides in the seaside district of Tarabya, spending her time researching Turkish history and culture.

A Texan turned expat; KATHLEEN HAMILTON GUNDOGDU’s initial view of Turkey was tanks and soldiers lining the runways of the airport when she first visited in 1981 during a military coup. In spite of that dubious welcome, she continued to return for vacations, until finally succumbing to the lure of Turkey and settling permanently in 1998. Married to a Turk, she is busy raising their son, who was born in 2001. In her “spare time” she specializes in writing articles about the lesser-known historical treasures of Istanbul for a number of publications when not on the road co-managing her Texas-based silk accessories business SULTAN's CARAVAN.

LOUISE RUSKIN is the thirty-seven year old principal of The English International School in Istanbul, having taught early childhood development for the past fourteen years. Her rocky love affair with Turkey since 1994 has included two walk-outs, once back to her native England and once to brooding Hungary. But Turkey and its charms managed to win her back. Now taking the good with the bad, for better or worse, Turkey is her home. She’s never been married--through choice rather than lack of opportunity-- and has no children…if she doesn’t count the seventy five at her school.

A native of Pakistan, MAHIRA AFRIDI-PERESE grew up in Karachi and the United Arab Emirates. Her love affair with Turkey began in 1994 when she visited Istanbul on a family holiday. Five years later she met her Turkish-American husband on a blind date in New York City. In 2002, after earning a graduate degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C., she worked in Cairo researching migration issues in the Middle East at the International Organization for Migration. In 2003, Mahira and her husband moved to Istanbul where she now looks forward to focusing on migration issues concerning Turkey and the surrounding region.

MARIA YARBROUGH ORHON has combined an English/Scottish/Irish/Virginia/South Carolina heritage with an upbringing in Beirut, Tehran, Ankara, Athens, and Istanbul, and she celebrates the wealth that these experiences have given to her, her Turkish husband and two children. An educator for more than two decades, she is currently Secondary School Director at Turkey’s acclaimed Robert College, a premier school that has turned out many of the country’s business and government leaders.

Archaeologist MAUREEN BASEDOW has been working at Troy since 1990 and spent three years in Anadoluhisar, Istanbul as a Fulbright fellow. She met and married her architect husband, Lynn, in Istanbul.  Both Americans, they consider Turkey "home" and relive their romance with the country, its people and each other every time they visit. Currently a Professor of Classics at the University of Miami-Ohio, near Cincinnati, Maureen can frequently be found preparing lectures while listening to Turkish music on her iPod.

NANCY LUNSFORD is an artist presently living in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised in Southern Appalachia, Nancy augmented her early education in mountain folklore with a degree in Art History and English Literature from New York University. She lived in Ankara, Turkey, from 1986 to 1991, exhibiting her work at Urart Galeri. Three years in Indonesia, six years in Turkey and an abiding interest in non-Western art forms have all contributed to her development as an artist and as a citizen of the world.   

Wanderlust-struck NATALIE BAKER was born in Britain and has been trying to leave ever since. At eighteen she succeeded, teaching English in a small town near Prague. After studying Czech and German in London she wound up in Poland, before moving to Istanbul in 2002 on the dubious pretexts of better weather and her mother's penchant for Turkish Delight. After two years teaching English, she is currently wandering around Anatolia, gazing over Lake Egirdir, drinking cocktails in Side and deciding what to do next.

RHONDA VANDER SLUIS was born in Primghar, Iowa. She spent ten years in New York City and conducted missionary work in Haiti and Pakistan before heading to Turkey in 1990. Coming to her senses and leaving the church in 1994, she returned to Turkey in 1997 for another four years, where she worked as a nurse educator at the American Hospital and the Koc University School of Nursing. She is the co-author of From the Bosphorus: A Self-guided Tour of the Bosphorus. Currently living in Portland, Oregon with her partner, Cyndi, she is a pediatric nurse.

An instructor of writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder, SALLY GREEN’s first visit to Turkey as a teenager in 1978 changed her life. She studied Turkish at Bosphorus University in Istanbul, and later met Varol Tuncay, her Turkish husband of eighteen years, while teaching English there. She also taught at Bilkent University, Ankara. Currently she is writing a novel about an American who travels to Turkey on a religious "Footsteps of Paul" tour. Her manuscript has been supported by a variety of grants and awards. Sally's in-laws spend several months of each year with her family, and she and her husband plan to reside in Turkey again when their two young children are a bit older.

SUSAN FLEMING HOLM is the Dorothy Donald Professor of Modern Foreign Languages at Monmouth College in Illinois.  With her former husband, Jim McHenry, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Erzurum, teaching English at Ataturk University 1966 to 1968.  They returned to Turkey in 1974-75, living in Ankara and Northern Cyprus.  During her sojourn in Erzurum, she came to love the city with its rich and difficult history, its wealth of folk music and dance, and its ancient streets and alleys.  She remembers and misses most the openness, warmth and hospitality of the people of Erzurum, and of all Turks. She dedicates her tale to Suheyla Tinel.

An African-American with Canadian roots, TANALA OSAYANDE is a bit of a wanderer.  She has taught English in Mexico, worked for a policy institute in Los Angeles, and been a budget manager for a nonprofit teacher training organization in New York City. She lived in Istanbul for two years, teaching English to corporate clients and learning the rules of engagement on the Turkish dating scene. Her home of the moment is Mexico.

Californian TRICI VENOLA is a Los Angeles visual artist with a background in digital art. She fell in love with Turkey when it reawakened her talent after a bad case of computer burnout creating art for a slew of video games, such as the Super Mario Brothers. Drawing from life in pen and ink, she has completed FREEFALL IN BYZANTIUM, an illustrated memoir of her experiences in and about Turkey over the past five years. Her tale is adapted from that memoir. She lives in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet neighborhood.

California native VALERIE TASIRAN lives in Istanbul with her Turkish husband.  She is completing her Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, while lecturing in American history at Bosphorus University and working as an instructor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Koc University.  She has delivered academic papers on subjects ranging from Americanization, hip-hop and regional identity in Northern Mexico to the effects of nationalist politics on Armenian intermarriage in Fresno, California. A naturalized Turkish citizen and avid shopper, Valerie continues to construct a modern concept of "Turkishness," and admits to making a few misguided purchases along the way.

WENDY FOX was born and raised in Tonasket, Washington, a rural agricultural town in North Central region of the state. After she completed her MFA and taught for a year in the Spokane Community College district, she moved to Kayseri, where she instructed English and literature at Erciyes University. She also lived in Istanbul, working at a private university. She currently resides in Seattle.