Gunel Movlud (Azerbaijan)

Gunel Movlud  was born in 1981 in the Jabrail region of Azerbaijan. A 2003 graduate in fine art from the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Theatre, Movlud started her career as a journalist. In 1993 she was forced to flee her hometown in the Nagorny-Karabakh region when war broke out with Armenia in a dispute over the ownership of the region. Movlud spent the next 5 years in a tent refugee camp in the Sabirabad region of Azerbaijan.

In 2012, she started contributing as a freelancer to Azadliq, the Azeri-language section of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and in 2013, she joined Meydan TV as editor and writer. Movlud has published three books of poetry; Darkness and Us (2004, Baku, “Qanun,”), 5 XL (2011, Baku, “Qanun”) and Response to the Late Afternoon (2013, Baku, “Qanun”). Her poetry and novels has been translated into English, Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, German and Norwegian languages. As a translator, she has published three books from Russian to Azeri: Viktor Pelevin’s Oman Ra, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Stendhal’s Red and Black.

The main topics of her writings and articles are democracy, human rights, gender equality, rights of minorities, peacekeeping and human values. 

In 2024  Gunel Movlud’s novel “The Camp” was published into Georgian by Sulakauri Publishing in Oktai Kazumovi’s translation.