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Aziza Kasumov grew up in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany, but has spent the past eight years of her life in the US, first in Los Angeles, then in New York. She studied international relations and journalism at the University of Southern California and worked as a reporter for news organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Financial Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at Columbia University. Her faculty sponsor for this submission was Susan Bernofsky from Columbia University.