Chahrahʹhā-yi khākastarī: Persiska (Farsi) 1397

In the summer of 2014, in northern Iraq, more than one hundred thousand Yezidis were besieged on Sinjar Mountain alone, by ISIS forces. Otten, a journalist based in Iraqi Kurdistan for the past four years, covers the massacres of Yezidi men and the mass abduction of Yezidi women and children with extraordinary intensity. Today, over 3,000 Yezidi women and girls remain in the Caliphate where they are bought and sold, and passed between fighters as chattel. Otten bases her book on interviews with survivors, as well as those who smuggled them to safety. Cathy Otten is an award-winning British journalist and author formerly based in Iraq. Her book With Ash On Their Faces: Yezidi Women and the Islamic State was published in the US by OR books in 2017. It was described by the The Los Angeles Review of Books as: "The best kind of humanist journalism: lucid, transparent, grimly realistic.… (N)o book has covered it better.” When not reporting features for newspapers and magazines, Cathy can be found giving talks about journalism and her book at universities and institutes.