Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate and filmmaker.  He publishes regularly with The Guardian, and his writing also features in The Saturday Paper, Huffington Post, New Matilda, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald.  Boochani is also co-director (with Arash Karr Sarvestani) of the 2017 feature-length film Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time; and collaborator on Nazanin Sahamizadeh’s play Manus.

No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature in addition to the Nonfiction category. It has been published in 18 languages in 23 countries and is currently being adapted for both stage and screen. His most recent book is Freedom Only Freedom.

He was a political prisoner incarcerated by the Australian government in Papua New Guinea for almost seven years. In November 2019 Behrouz escaped to New Zealand and now resides in Wellington.

Author photo Hoda Afshar.