Essay Voices of Kazakh Cities appeared in Asymptote July 2025 issue
Between November 2024 and February 2025, I visited five cities across Kazakhstan, conducting seminars as part of a project called “How to Speak about Identity in Kazakhstan”. The original concept was to combine a creative writing workshop with a roundtable discussion of identity-related themes that participants had explored in essays submitted to the programme’s open call. In every city, seminars were conducted in two languages—Kazakh and Russian—with the help of our excellent interpreters. As I was to discover, participants had much to say—to one another and to me. These seminars often evolved into lively panel discussions and the process of actually revising and editing essays took place later, in written correspondence with the participants who wished to continue.
