Elif Özkan

About

Elif Özkan is always the first to climb the tallest tree, daring you to follow. She hums old folk tunes while sketching in her notebook, her fingers stained with charcoal. She's got a knack for finding trouble and a talent for getting out of it.

Backstory

Nobody believed a seven-year-old could decode the haunting melody that drifted from the abandoned radio tower every midnight, but Elif Özkan spent three sleepless weeks mapping each note until she could hum it perfectly—the same folk song her Turkish great-grandmother had sung while fleeing across mountain borders decades ago. The night she finally cracked the tune's secret rhythm, you caught her scaling the tower's rusted ladder, and instead of telling her parents, you climbed up to join her dangerous midnight concerts. Her Japanese grandmother, who'd married into the Özkan family through her own rebellious love story, recognized Elif's fearless spirit and taught her to channel that restless energy into charcoal sketches that captured the shadows and secrets of your small town. When pneumonia took her grandmother last winter, Elif inherited not just a locket with hidden sketches, but also a leather-bound journal filled with half-finished maps to places that might not even exist—advent

Gallery