Aigul Kemelbayeva

Aigul Kemelbayeva was born in 1965 in the village of Kundyzdy, in the region of Semey, Kazakhstan.[1][2][3] She began writing at a young age, producing her first novel, A Journey to the Seventh Continent, at age 15, which came second in a national youth literary contest.[4]

After graduating from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University with a degree in journalism in 1987, she attended the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, graduating in 1994.[1][2][3]

Kemelbayeva is now based in Nur-Sultan.[1] She is best known for her work as a Kazakh-language writer, primarily of short stories, which have been published in such literary magazines as Zhuldyz.[1] She has also written several books of prose and essays.[2]

Her 2002 book Munara ("The Tower") was published in 2002.[4] It contains two novellas, The Nanny and The Last Tiger.[4] The Nanny is a semi-autobiographical story of a Kazakh student in Moscow immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.[5] It is considered a landmark work, the first such work written by a Kazakh woman that goes beyond the socialist realist conventions that characterized prior Kazakh literature.[5] As part of a "new tide" of intellectual prose in Kazakh literature following the nation's independence in the early 1990s, her writing has been hailed as bringing a "new artistic quality" to the genre by fusing European literary styles.[6][7] She is also considered one of the first Kazakh literary writers to discuss issues of gender.[8]

In addition to The Tower, her books include 2001's Tobylgysai, 2013's Mazhnun's Heart, and 2016's Soz Hikmet.[4] Her story "Kôkenaj and Ķalķaman" was included in English translation in the 2019 anthology Contemporary Kazakh literature. Prose.[9]

Kemelbayeva is also a literary critic, having produced more than 200 articles on the subject.[1] She has served as head of the literature department at the Kuanyshbayev State Academic Kazakh Music and Drama Theater.[4] In 2005, she co-wrote the Bolat Sharip film Kunya ("The Holy Sin"), based on a story by Magzhan Zhumabayev.[2][10] She has also worked on scripts for the documentaries Sultan Orazalin (2013), Suleiman Eskarayev (2012), and Zhiembet zhyrau (2014).[4]

Her various literary awards include the Daryn national youth literature award in 2000.[2][3]