Ak Welsapar

Ak Welsapar (Russian: Ак Вельсапар; born September 19, 1956) is a Swedish-Turkmen journalist and writer.

In 1979, he received a Master's degree in journalism at Moscow State University. In 1989, he received a Master's degree in literary theory from Maxim Gorky Literature Institute.

As a journalist in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic as well as after its declaration of independence in 1991, Welsapar published investigative works that were critical of government mismanagement. In 1992, he was placed under house arrest and later removed from both the Writers’ Union and the Union of the Journalists of Turkmenistan, with his works being banned. He left Turkmenistan for Moscow in 1993 and has lived in Sweden since 1994, where he runs Gün Förlag with his wife, printing books that have been censored by totalitarian regimes.

Welsapar writes in Turkmen, Russian and Swedish, and is the author of more than 20 books, many of which have been translated into other languages, such as English, German, Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian. His first book translated into English was his novel The Tale of Aypi, which was followed in 2018 by translations of The Revenge of the Foxes and the short stories compiled in Death of the Snake Catcher.