Sara Omar


Sara Omar is a Danish-Kurdish author, human rights activist and poet. She is the first internationally recognized female novelist from Kurdistan. She started out as a poet and has published several critical articles in the Middle Eastern media.
Omar is originally from Iraqi Kurdistan, but she and her family fled from war in the late 1990s. She has lived in Denmark since 2001. She is a columnist for the Danish magazine Alt for Damerne. Omar's debut novel Dead Washer was published in Denmark on 30 November 2017. Both Omar and her book have been recognised and rewarded with awards and honours in Denmark. The Danish News Paper Jyllands-Posten compared her to Elena Ferrante and the French newspaper Le Monde compared her to Simone de Beauvoir and Voltaire because of her fight for freedom, equality and justice.
Because of the dangers involved with criticising Islam, Omar lives with police protection since 2017.

Early life and education

Sara Omar was born in 1986 in Sulaymaniah in Kurdistan. She grew up during the Iran–Iraq War, which was followed by the first Gulf War. She lived in the town next to Halabja and experienced the biggest gas attack on a civilian population in recent times at close range 16 March 1988.
Omar also lived in Kurdistan during the Al-Anfal campaign. She used this period as the backdrop for her novel Dead Washer.

Early authorship and human rights policy

Omar participated in WEYA in 2012, an international festival for 1000 of the world's most talented young artists from 100 different countries. She fought to have her literary works published in the Middle East, but since she experienced a bidding war between Danish publishers as she pitched her idea in Denmark, she ended up signing with Poltikens Forlag.
Omar is also a script- and songwriter. In spring 2014, she was asked by literature magazine KRITIKER, if she would publish a poem in their magazine number 33, published in November 2014. She accepted, and contributed with a poem dedicated to her mother. In the poem she describes a mother, a female figure, a shadow that reflects most of the women in the patriarchal and paternalistic society, she depicts through her literature. She is the first female Kurdish novelist to publicly break free from cultural norms and expressing the most tabooed subjects; A woman’s genitals, which holds the honour of an entire family. A woman being stoned, whipped and sent to hell because she’s a woman:
In 2016 Danish PEN published the anthology "Ord på flugt" with poems by Omar and other prominent authors and journalists. These authors all share their individual experiences with fleeing from war-ravaged countries. Her poem "The Silence of Childhood" received the following review:
Omar has performed poetry readings in the Danish parliament building, Christiansborg Palace, and the National Gallery of Denmark on several occasions. She is also part of the expert committee as expert adviser and co-organizer in Expert Advisory at Arts & Conference.

Magazines, newspapers and debates