Essmat Sophie

Essmat Sophie (Asima) is an award-winning author, award-winning film director, researcher, and activist. Born and raised in the Kurdish region of Iran. After several years living in United States, now she is living in Norway...

She holds a master’s degree In information Science from University of Oslo and Tehran university, and another master degree in English Literature, American and British studies, from University of Oslo, and another in Social Science from Salt Lake City university. 

The titles of her latest books are: “Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins" (May, 2023), “Last Day of Autumn” (2021); and “In The eye of the Storm" (2013), which got the literary award "Ordknappen" Prize in Norway. She has translated some books and articles from English to other Languages. Latest translated title is: "Women's Journey from Shadow to Light". This book is translated from English to Persian. She translated some poems of Sherko Bekas from Kurdish to Norwegian. Essmat Sophie's writings have appeared in Science databases as ScienceDirect, Academy Search Premier and some literary periodicals. Sophie's stories and articles have appeared in various publications.

Sophie is prolific film director and film producer. Her last animation short film: “Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins” is made in 2023. Sophie received honors and awards as the best director of animation film. Her recent movie won prizes at some film festivals, including the Cannes Film Awards festival in France, The FemaleEye Film Festival in Cananda, StockholmCity Film Festival,  Vasteras Film Festival in Sweden, European Short Awards and Toronto International Women Film Festival. An excerpt from the most recently published novel by Essmat Sophie served as the inspiration for this animation. She is writer, producer, and director of this animation film. 

Sophie has given speeches on a variety of subjects, including the Iranian women's movement, the struggle and achievements of Kurdish women, human rights, writing and resistance, and many other topics.

She worked and conducted research in several fields in Norway. She published a master's thesis on multiculturalism and public libraries as meeting places for immigrant women. One of her field's experts has been working on multiculturalism and immigrant women for many years. She served as the leader of the Norwegian group "Flerkult" for a number of consecutive years.  Flerkult or Multicultur is a special group for multicultural library services. They promote multicultural library services, increase awareness of these services in libraries and among authorities, seek to ensure that political signals are financially followed up on, encourage the sharing of ideas, promote professional development and network building.