IRA MATH­UR

Born in Is­tan­bul in 1989, Se­da Ulu, the Turk­ish au­thor of Light in the Dark­ness (Cos­mo Pub­lish­ing, Sep­tem­ber 2023), stud­ied in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions. Still, her child­hood pas­sion for the arts—writ­ing, read­ing, cin­e­ma, and the per­form­ing arts—grew stronger as she ma­tured.

Ulu de­cid­ed to lis­ten to her in­ner voice and, fol­low­ing her de­gree, at­tend­ed class­es at the Turk­ish Di­a­log An­latım İletişim Acad­e­my, fol­lowed by a course in cre­ative writ­ing train­ing at the Is­tan­bul Busi­ness In­sti­tute.

Ulu wrote her first nov­el, Light in the Dark­ness, fol­lowed by the sec­ond book in the se­ries, Dark­ness in the Light, cur­rent­ly un­der trans­la­tion.

(The fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion, al­though it is not an ex­tract from ei­ther of her nov­els, is what Se­da Ulu had to say about why she writes and her artis­tic process: Start of sub­mis­sion on Se­da Ulu’s writ­ing process.

“I’ve been writ­ing since I was a child. This is a pas­sion I can­not give up. Putting my feel­ings on pages helps me ex­press my­self. Get­ting away from the out­side world and en­ter­ing the uni­verse of the sto­ries I write is the on­ly way to cope with many emo­tions. And when peo­ple read my nov­els, they con­nect with these feel­ings. They tell me their own sto­ries. This is the most price­less feel­ing in the world. You write the book alone, and the read­er reads your book alone. Yet, in a mo­ment of con­ver­gence, the soli­tude dis­solves, and you two find your­selves no longer alone. This is one of the most re­mark­able rea­sons to write.

“Many fic­tion au­thors be­come that char­ac­ter as they write their char­ac­ters. This is the most fun of the job. But the cre­ation process can be very painful. No mat­ter how painful the cre­ation process is, a part of your soul trav­els to oth­er worlds, and you can’t help but put it on pa­per. That’s what it’s like for me to be a writer. The sense of in­ner pur­pose. It is a call­ing.

“Words are pow­er­ful. Us­ing them, you can cre­ate a new world and in­vite every­one in­to that world. I love this feel­ing. And that’s why I want to keep writ­ing un­til I die. One of the things I love most about writ­ing is that it chal­lenges me. Some­times, you reach a point where you strug­gle with your own char­ac­ters. That grand place where fic­tion takes over a writer. I don’t re­mem­ber how of­ten I stopped writ­ing or delet­ed what I had writ­ten and rewrote it re­peat­ed­ly. I am still not stop­ping to write af­ter all these ex­pe­ri­ences have shown me that this is not just a job but a life pur­pose. Writ­ing is a strong pas­sion, like the spark in­side you turn­ing in­to fire. No mat­ter how stuck you feel, it is im­pos­si­ble to let go. You must reach the end of the sto­ry.

“In this se­ries of nov­els, I write of the choic­es we make in life and the con­se­quences of these choic­es. What­ev­er you choose, it comes with a price. You can­not sep­a­rate the Dark­ness and the Light. But you de­cide who you are by the choic­es you make. The sec­ond book is more about look­ing in the mir­ror. Mir­rors some­times re­flect what you don’t want to see … Big ques­tion! When evil and good col­lide, how can the Light in the Dark­ness re­sist the Dark­ness in the Light? In this se­ries of nov­els, we see every face of peo­ple, and an un­ex­pect­ed event awaits you on every page. You can­not make a de­fin­i­tive judge­ment about any char­ac­ter in this book. You can­not pre­dict their next move, and I think this keeps the read­er on the pages of the book.

“In Light in the Dark­ness, my first nov­el set in Eng­land in the 1950s, an un­end­ing ad­ven­ture takes flight, guid­ed by a del­i­cate yet emo­tion­al­ly charged nar­ra­tive. It sweeps us through time, leav­ing us yearn­ing while wrapped in grace­ful prose. Soli­tude’s po­ten­tial trans­for­ma­tion and the hid­den face of pos­ses­sion are laid bare, en­twined with ten­sion and ex­cite­ment that nev­er wane.

“As the sto­ry dives in­to a part­ner­ship kin­dled by a shared pas­sion, un­re­lent­ing ob­ses­sion, and the enig­ma of Dark­ness, it plants a sin­gle, thought-pro­vok­ing seed: Could we find the courage, like Gali­na, to un­earth love’s most mys­te­ri­ous and un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ries?

“My sec­ond (up­com­ing) book is about awak­en­ing. I love us­ing the crow and hum­ming­bird as metaphors for Dark­ness and Light. In the first nov­el, the hum­ming­bird guid­ed us to­ward the Light. How­ev­er, Light can some­times blind us, ob­struct­ing our view of re­al­i­ty. In the sub­se­quent book, the crow will lead us to the realm of dark­ness, un­veil­ing all truths. The crow re­flects your own im­age back to you.

“For me, Dark­ness and Light rep­re­sent an in­sep­a­ra­ble whole. I had to cre­ate char­ac­ters and fic­tion to tell this in a sto­ry. Of course, the char­ac­ters should have names. Like Gali­na, Joseph, Jack, Rose, An­tho­ny … It didn’t mat­ter what their names or gen­ders were. They all rep­re­sent­ed Light and Dark­ness to me. The one that ex­ists in all of us. But I had to find a sym­bol. I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the mean­ing they at­trib­uted to the hum­ming­bird in Aztec be­lief. The hum­ming­bird rep­re­sent­ed Light, while the crow rep­re­sent­ed Dark­ness.

“The char­ac­ters show this with their ac­tions and words through­out the nov­el. Their faces un­der the masks …

There is a grain of truth in every fic­tion. A re­flec­tion on peo­ple’s shad­ow self and how they hide it in their dai­ly lives. Every­one has se­crets. In this nov­el, any­one can do any­thing. Some­one who seems ter­ri­ble to you may do a good deed and sur­prise you as the sto­ry pro­gress­es. And some­one who seems good to you can do bad things. Re­venge, am­bi­tion, ar­ro­gance, sin, crime ... A fic­tion that de­scribes the sup­pressed emo­tions with­in us in a pro­found and lit­er­ary way.

“Dark­ness in the Light, the se­quel to Light in the Dark­ness, is the sto­ry of a girl who leaves the or­phan­age and turns in­to a woman. It all starts with her mak­ing a wish. She ex­pe­ri­ences very bad things in the or­phan­age. This leads her to deeply de­sire pow­er. Since she has been alone all her life, she wants some­one to be with her.

“Her dark side is very pow­er­ful, and once she dis­cov­ers it, she be­comes un­stop­pable. At this point, she needs to learn to bal­ance both sides. This is very dif­fi­cult for some­one who comes from the depths of Dark­ness. In this book, the read­er wit­ness­es the war in­side Gali­na. The bat­tle of good and evil ... Maybe she rep­re­sents every woman in us. It’s like a mir­ror that makes us face our­selves. No mat­ter what you do, you can’t es­cape your past. While she thinks she has es­caped her past, fate plays an­oth­er game for her and takes this nov­el to a dif­fer­ent place. The heavy bur­den of find­ing out that the peo­ple from your past still have a con­nec­tion to you while run­ning away from your past. As a re­sult, no se­cret re­mains hid­den, and no one is ac­tu­al­ly what they seem. And noth­ing is as it seems.”

—End of ex­tract

The Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Se­da Ulu’s sec­ond book, Dark­ness in the Light (the se­quel to Light in the Dark­ness), is cur­rent­ly un­der­way.)

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 NGC Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days. Web­site: www.iras­room.org In­quiries by au­thors can be sent to iras­room@gmail.com