Hello!

I am Derya Atlas. I started the first version of this newsletter (Tipped) in 2020 while I was mustering up the courage to carve myself a space to write while working at a dull job. I published 10 issues, which I am quite happy with. Then life got in the way, and my courage vanished.

I quit over a year ago. I am itching to say, ‘…and I got that courage back!’ but no, it was more than that. I had to rethink and rebuild what it is that prompts me to write, which I thought for a long time was courage, to dare to take up space.

Well, sometime last year I came to the realisation that I don’t need courage to write or to ask for permission to create. I simply do things now.

So I started doing things I’d always wanted to do. I am now writing a graphic novel titled Aslında Yüzü Güzel, and comics with my dear friend Belkıs. It is about growing up fat in Turkey in the early 2000s, sort of auto-fiction. For the past 5 years, my sister Duygu and I have been sharing the stories of ‘ordinary’ women in Turkey on Onlyherstory, and now we plan more things to come. I have so many ideas that I hope I can share them with you one day.

In the meantime, I read (mostly fiction) and see art exhibitions (mostly in London), both of which inspire me tremendously. This ‘ajanda’ will be a place to record those and ‘my essential notes’ pertaining to my daily life. I might publish in Turkish, too. Who knows! I am a person who simply does things now (so she says).

Enjoy!

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