Baqytgul Sarmekova

Baqytgul Sarmekova is a Kazakh writer who grew up in a small village by the Caspian Sea. She began writing in 2014, after graduating from the Western Kazakhstani Engineering and Humanities University, where she studied law. She has since published two collections of stories: Күн батқан кездегі оқиға (An Incident in the Twilight) in 2019 and Кейіпкер (In Search of a Character) in 2020. Sarmekova is the winner of the prose award at the 2016 Shabyt International Festival of Creative Youth and a recipient of a 2020 Rahymjan Otarbaev Foundation grant, awarded bi-annually to talented young writers, poets, and playwrights.