Losing my gender at Troy / Maureen Basedow. Digging with rural workmen in the 1990s, a Bryn Mawr archaeologist tests the conventional wisdom of gender relations
Orienting express /Jennifer Eaton Gökmen. A dispirited and dependent woman reempowers herself by leading her visiting mother on an adventurous cross-country road trip
Hello, I love you / Amanda Coffin. A computer specialist in her forties struggles to thwart amorous advances of tireless would-be suitors as she tours eastern Turkey
Last stop on the Orient Express
The painting or the boy / Eveline Zoutendijk. When a devout hotel employee objects to an Ottoman painting hung in the lobby of a hotel, the Dutch hotel owner must decipher the paintings mystery and decide a course of action
Conversion in Erzurum / Susan Fleming Holm. In the 1960s, a Peace Corps volunteer in remote eastern Turkey weighs her cultural assumptions regarding female clothing and taboo body parts
The beat of a different drummer / Pat Yale. A Briton wishing to avoid a traditional livestock sacrifice as thanks for her new stone home hopes to repair the town's Ramazan drums instead
Coming clean in Kayseri / Wendy Fox. In a steamy 13th-century Cappadocian bathhouse a morbidly shy English teacher confronts her self-image
Haze / Katherine Belliel. A heartbroken Michigan girl finds closure in Bursa at an ancient Ottoman bath, nurtured by her would-be Turkish sister-in-law
The goddess metamorphosis / Karen-Claire Voss. Taking part in a traditional bridal bath in 1995, a New Jersey scholar finds aspects of the ancient gddess culture alive and well in a Turkish hamam in central Anatolia
Femin-Istanbul / Dana Gonzalez. A public relations professional seeking the cure for an intimate ailment in Istanbul agonizes over assumed cultural taboos
Forever after, for now / Tanala Osayande. A thirty-year-old African American reviews the rules of engagement on the Istanbul dating
scene, where rather than playing it cool the men won't stop calling
Village bride / Eppie Lunsford. A young woman from rural Tennessee connects to her Appalachian upbringing in the 1980s while participating in theatrical village weddings in central Turkey
A fine kettle of fish / Trici Venola. Love and chaos are one in the same in Istanbul for a dramatic Kurd and a midlife Los Angeleno
Tying the knot, Ottoman princess-style / Anastasia M. Ashman. A woman from bohemian California finds marrying into the Turkish high society, surrounded by paparazzi, is the fulfillment of a forgotten wish
Dancing my way home / Diane Caldwell. A psychotherapist answers the enticing beat of a Turkish darbuka drum and escapes her rigid, twice-divorced life in Seattle
From the hip / Sally Green. A writing instructor compares the synthetic salacious approach to belly dancing in a Colorado recreation center with the spirited communal event she recalls from Turkey
The language of family / Ana Carolina Fletes. Learning from her polished TV host mother-in-law, a Guatemalan grows into her femininity and her family, speaking Turkish with an unrivalled accent
The food factory / Catherine Yiğit. In a women-filled kitchen on the Black Sea coast, a pregnant Irish bride helps prepare a feast to welcome the family's next bride
Cherry pie / Mahira Afridi-Perese. An affluent Pakistani who never learned to cook defends her American-born Turkish husband's right to bake when a man in the kitchen upsets his family patriarch
Water under the bridge / Catherine Salter Bayar. A clothing designer sets boundaries in the Seljuk home she shares with her Kurdish husband, his parents, and his nine siblings
The business of the bazaar / Dena Sukaya. A Seattle retail executive abandons the boardroom for Istanbul's Grand Bazaar
Unpacking the pazar arabasi / Valerie Tairan. An American-born naturalized
Turkish citizen reconciles the meaning of Turkishness with her own misguided assumptions
Ankara's fertile ground / Nancy Lunsford. A doubly pregnant Appalachian artist blooms in a land of fecundity and fortunetelling, where popcorn is magical and village midwives are more accurate than sonograms
A mother's charms / Maria Yarbrough Orhon. Doubtful of shamanistic charms and rituals in her Turkish husband's family, a South Carolina woman nevertheless learns to conduct them on her own
Evil eye exorcism / Annie Prior Ozsara. When a series of accidents befall a young couple in Istanbul, Turkish relatives call on their Black Sea matriarch to perform a shamanistic exorcism
Rescued by village intelligence / Claire Uhr. Stricken with influenza, a friendless Australian finds surprise succor with unknown Cappadocian neighbors
The headman's pajamas / Jessica Lutz. Village men in a desolate war-torn border town near Iraq in 1993 maintain impeccable standards of civility toward a Dutch journalist who smuggles herself into their lives
Hijacked / Kathleen Hamilton Gündoğdu. Traveling alone by bus to Konya during a civil unrest, a young Texan secretary is unexpectedly detoured
Failed missionary / Rhonda Vander Sluis. A Christian evangelist from Iowa is transformed by the compassion of Turkish souls she hopes to save.
