About Istanbul Crossing by Timothy Jay Smith
A young Syrian, after watching his cousin executed by ISIS for being homosexual, flees to Istanbul for safety. He develops such a good reputation for his resourcefulness in smuggling other refugees to Greece that he’s approached by both the CIA and ISIS to smuggle high-profile individuals on the run, putting him in grave danger on many fronts. In the process of juggling their two operations, he falls in love with, and must decide between, two men who offer him very different futures.
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Author Bio:
From a young age, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.
Tim has won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays in numerous prestigious competitions. Fire on the Island won the Gold Medal in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel, and his screenplay adaptation of it was named Best Indie Script by WriteMovies. Another novel, The Fourth Courier, was a finalist for Best Gay Mystery in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Previously, he won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the de Groot Prize) for his novel, Checkpoint (later published as A Vision of Angels). Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012.
Tim was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. His stage play tribute to Matthew Shepard, How High the Moon, won the prestigious Stanley Drama Award. His screenplays have won or placed in dozens of screenwriting competitions including those sponsored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Capital Fund Screenplay Competition, WriteMovies, Houston WorldFest, Fresh Voices, and StoryPros.
Tim’s fifth novel, Istanbul Crossing, winner of the Global Fiction Award, was published in September 2024 by Leapfrog Press. His screenplay adaptation of it has already won or placed in several international competitions, including the Academy Nicholl Fellowships.