Onder Deligoz is a Turkish author and journalist currently residing in Canada. He was the recipient of the 2018 Humber School of Writers, PEN Writers in Exile Scholarship. The full scholarship is available to writers in exile who wish to participate in Humber’s Creative Writing by Correspondence Program, where students work with a professional writer-mentor to improve their short stories, poems, memoir, or novel-in-progress.
PEN Canada: For starters, what caused you to leave Turkey?
Onder Deligoz: As a journalist, you have two choices in a country which is sliding into a dictatorship. Chasing only the truth for news or turning into a pro-government journalist, which means losing integrity and earning too much money. Despite increasing political pressure, I chose the first option like other independent journalists do.