Selen Ozturk is a San Francisco-based writer born in Istanbul. Evergreen Review, Necessary Fiction, minor literature[s], Hobart, SF Chronicle, SFGATE, and more.
fiction
What the Body Can Do – Expat Press (2025)
Pesto – Vol. 1 Brooklyn (2025)
Cancer – Split Lip (2025)
Attendant – minor literature[s] (2025)
Is There Still Gold In the American River? – Necessary Fiction (2024)
Passenger – Hobart (2024)
Honest – Hobart (2024)
We Did It When You Bled – Hobart (2024)
All That is Solid Melts Into Wind – Where Meadows (2024)
poetry
We Drove – Spectra Poets (2025)
Valentine’s Card – Spectra Poets (2025)
Tiebreak – Sport Literate (2024, print)
three poems – Evergreen Review (2024)
three English-Provencal translations of Arnaut Daniel – La Piccioletta Barca (2024)
two poems – California Quarterly (2024)
two poems – Haight Ashbury Literary Journal (2024, print)
poems – Ginosko (2024)
poems – MONDAY (2021)
crit / journo
f/c Full Stop, Beyond the Last Estate
two plays reviewed – San Francisco Chronicle (2023)
greening California’s schoolyards – SFGATE / Bay City News (2023)
film retrospectives – Bright Lights Film Journal (2022 – 2024) including Maya Deren in Haiti, ’70s eco-horror, early CGI, how The Monkees birthed New Hollywood, and Turksploitation cinema
movies, music, and books – PopMatters (2022)
visual arts reviews – Whitewall including San Francisco exhibition reviews; a Friday art world party column; international exhibitions like the Venice Biennale, the Recontres d’Arles, Paris Mens’ Fashion Week, and Milan Mens’ Fashion Week; the burgeoning NFT and VR beat; and interviews with artists like Tourmaline, Milagros, Brett Cook, Koen Vanmechelen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Ahmet Güneştekin, and Ignasi Monreal (2022)
arts reporting – The Daily Californian (2022)
two 1970 student protest films – Senses of Cinema (2022)
How Now, Brown Cow – The Oxonian Review (2022)
All That Form Allows – Bayou Magazine (2022, print)
Rothko Chapel – Wilderness House Literary Review (2022)
Arcosanti – Archetype (2022)
Fabricated Ruins – Synchronized Chaos (2022)
reviewing Bill McKibben and Barry Lopez – Stone Pier Press (2022)
freelance reporting / research – 2,000 community outlets through a national newswire (2022- )
city reporter for Bay Area hyperlocal papers (2022 – 2023)
misc
wrote Adapt, short movie about the long-term benefits of psychopathy in the corporate world – Official Selection of the Sacramento International Film Festival and nominated for the IMDB qualifying competition of the LA Independent Women Film Awards (2024)
quoted, covered, interviewed, blurbed – Verso, San Francisco Chronicle, Cinema Retro, bivoulab, StudyHall.xyz,
fellowships, support etc. – Bread Loaf, GrubStreet, The Writers’ Grotto