Girl with a Gun
Diana Nammi became a fighter with the Peshmerga when she was only seventeen. Originally known as Galavezh, she grew up in the Kurdish region of Iran in the 1960s and 70s. She became involved in politics as a teenager and, like many students, played a part in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. But the new Islamic regime tolerated no opposition, and after Kurdistan was brutally attacked, Galavezh found that she had no choice but to become a soldier in the famed military force.
She spent twelve years on the front line, and helped lead the struggle for women’s rights and equality for the Kurdish people, becoming one of the Iranian regime’s most wanted in the process. As well as being the startling account of Galavezh's time as a fighter, Girl with a Gun is also a narrative about family and resilience, with a tragic love story at its heart.
Diana Nammi spent twelve years on the front line as a Peshmerga before moving to the UK as a political refugee, founding the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation in 2002. In 2014 she received the Special Jury Women on the Move Award from UNHCR and was recognised as one of the BBC's '100 Women'. In 2015 she won the Voices of Courage Award from the Women's Refugee Commission in New York.
In a twenty-year career as a journalist, Karen Attwood’s work has been published in all UK national newspapers as well as several international publications. She is a former staff writer at the Independent and the Press Association, and was on the launch team for Abu Dhabi’s first English-language newspaper, the National.