Khanim Ismayilgizi

Khanim Ismayilgizi (Xanım Garayeva) was born in Baku.

She studied at the Faculty of Philology of Azerbaijan State University (1979).

She worked as a proofreader, junior editor, and engineer-technologist at the “Ganjlik” publishing house (1972-1984). She left publishing for a while due to her stay in Ethiopia, but returned to publishing after returning to Azerbaijan. She worked as a department head at the Azerbaijan State University publishing house (1987-1989), department head and deputy chairman at the Azerbaijan Center for Artistic Translation and Literary Relations (1989-1995), deputy director at the “Bayati” Order Literature Center of the “Bilik” Educational Society (1995-1998), director, head of the Publishing Department at the Translation Center (2014-2016), and head of the Publishing Department at the Azerbaijan State Translation Center.

She has been engaged in artistic creativity since her youth. Her first poem was published in the newspaper "Yol" (1991). She tried her hand at poetry, journalism and translation. She began her journalistic career in 1979, and her articles, sketches and essays were published in the periodical press. She appeared on AzTV and the first independent TV channel, UNTI, with an author's program (1992-1993). She translated a collection of stories by Vasily Shukshin. She is the author of books on journalism and poetry. 

Her first work as a songwriter was the song "Let's Protect Our Love" (1993). The music she wrote for Tamara Valiyeva's play "My White Dove" is the composer's first large-scale work. She is the author of more than 300 songs.