I was born in İzmir in 1954, and my family moved to İstanbul in 1958.
After attending primary and secondary school and Robert College, I graduated from Boğaziçi University in İstanbul with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1979.
In 1980, I decided not to pursue a career in engineering and joined Redhouse Press in İstanbul as a production coordinator. That same year, I founded Mavibulut, a publishing house dedicated to children’s books.
My first picture book, Pan and His Flower, received an award from a jury of children.
In 1984, I received a scholarship from the International Youth Library in Munich, where I spent three months studying children’s literature.
In 1992, I was invited to teach children’s literature at Istanbul University’s Department of Librarianship, where I also completed my master’s degree. Over the following years, I taught courses on children’s literature, publishing in Turkey, desktop publishing, and information technologies.
In 1990, I began publishing Kırmızıfare (Red Mouse), a children’s literature magazine. I continued working as a children’s book editor at Redhouse Press until 1991.
In 1997, I was selected by Ankara University as one of the ten best children’s authors.
In 1999, I completed my research on children’s books and received my PhD.
In 1994, I founded the Association of Children’s Books, which later became the Turkish section of IBBY. I served as its president for ten years, until 2004.
In 1986, I served as the Turkish associate editor of Bookbird magazine.
I also founded Binbir Kitap (A Thousand and One Books), Turkey’s first children’s literature research magazine.
In 2000, my play Fa Usta’nın Kemanları (Master Fa’s Violins) won third prize in Tudem’s competition for children’s plays.
In 2007–2008, I was chosen as the best children’s author in a poll conducted by Bağcılar Atatürk Primary School and Swedish-Turkish Primary School.
In 2008, I received the Children’s Literature Award from Türkçem magazine in Prizren, Kosovo.
In 2009, I was chosen as the best children’s author by the Turkish Librarians’ Association.
In June 2009, I was the guest of honour at a children’s literature symposium at Marmara University.
In May 2012, I was the guest of honour at a symposium on living children’s authors at Osmangazi University in Eskişehir.
I have written more than 70 books for children and more than 100 articles on children’s literature.
I taught seminars on writing for children at Istanbul Bilgi University for two years and a one-semester creative writing course at Yeditepe University. I also taught children’s literature at Istanbul Aydın University.
In 2016, I was selected as the featured author of a symposium on living children’s authors organised by Osmangazi University in Eskişehir and Çukurova University in Adana.
I was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
In April 2020, I brought my Writing for Children workshop online. I had first started the course at Istanbul Bilgi University about fifteen years earlier.
In August 2020, I caught COVID-19 and spent twelve days recovering at home.
From June 2023 to June 2024, we lived in Toronto. While there, I had the opportunity to teach Writing for Children through Ankara Kitaplığı. I also took part in children’s events organised by the Yunus Emre Institute in Ottawa and Montreal.
After returning to Turkey in June 2024, I resumed my work at Mavibulut and my school visits.
In 2025, I launched a new project called 100İYİOKUR (“100 Good Readers”). The participants have read three books and shared their evaluations. Together with this group of educators, authors, illustrators, parents and librarians, we will develop new publishing projects.
In 2026, Mavibulut completed its 45th year and entered its 46th.