Boris Korkmazov

Boris Korkmazov is a novelist, short story writer and advocate for minority language rights from the North Caucasian republic of Cherkessia-Karachay. He has published several books in Russia and been represented in a collection of short stories by North-Caucasian writers under the common title A Lifelong War. Until August 2008, he was head of the bibliography department of the Master-kniga (Master Book) publishing house in Moscow.

Korkmazov has made many public statements criticizing a range of Russian government policies that he sees as exacerbating ethnic tensions in the Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia. He received threats for a number of years, escalating in August 2008 after he visited Cherkessia and addressed the Council of Elders on various contentious issues. These threats then followed him to Moscow. 

In 2009 he was invited as to take residence in Brussels as an ICORN guest writer. In addition to participating in panel discussions and lectures, giving interviews and testifying on the situation in the North Caucasus in a documentary, he has continued to write short stories, including an anthology of Caucasian fairytales and a yearbook on Turkology, all subsequently published in Moscow.