More Than A Bundle Story

Website under Construction!

Experiences of migration and making amongst the Turkish diaspora in Hackney’s garment trade.

Follow us on Instagram

Emel Sevinc is a British Turkish writer, researcher and curator from London, holding a BA (Hons) in English Language and Creative Writing. She has taught in secondary and higher education since 2008.

After stepping away from her role as an ESL teacher, Emel pursued her long-held ambition of writing her debut novel. Drawing on her upbringing in Hackney during the 1980s, her work is grounded in first-hand experience and shaped by stories passed down through her family and wider community. The people and places she portrays draw on lived memory, oral storytelling, folk traditions, and the shared histories of families who migrated from Türkiye, Bulgaria, and Romania from the late Ottoman period through to the present day. This perspective, combined with her focus on migration narratives and community experience, brings a rare authenticity and deeply personal resonance to her writing.

Alongside working on her novel, Emel founded Scribbles, a free-flow creative writing workshop that has supported emerging writers across venues including the Horniman Museum. She also works closely with individuals experiencing mental health challenges, helping them explore and express their feelings through writing.

Her work has been published in Writerly Magazine, and she has presented her writing at the Festival of Creativity organised by the Turkish Women’s Philanthropic Association of England.


Emel is also the founder of More Than a Bundle Story project, a storytelling initiative celebrating Turkish migrant histories from the 1960s to the 2000s. Through this project, she has curated community led workshops, collaborated on an exhibition at the Hackney Museum, and presented research on cultural identity at BATAS for the London School of Economics and the Hackney Museum.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Want to know more about Scribble writing workshop? Check the next events!

Scribble event

Be the first to know about new stories, upcoming events and more…

Last Instagram posts:

Join Us for the Opening of More Than a Bundle Story
Curated by Emel Sevinc The Morning Everything Changed Osman Nuri’s next chapter began at a small Turkish restaurant in Maida Vale, where he met Vural, a factory owner looking to provide a canteen for his many workers. Soon after, we opened that canteen together. Each day we served three kinds of hot meals, filling the space with the scent of home. Soup was a favourite, and we even warmed food brought from workers’ own kitchens. The canteen quickly became more than a place to eat; it became a place of comfort. People came with their joys, worries, and stories, trusting us deeply. Some confessions I still carry with me. I never imagined that years later I’d be leaving again, carrying my life across borders to call another country home. My mother would say, half joking & half grieving, “If I’d known you’d end up in London, I’d never have let you marry him.” At five years old, Ünzüfet hadn’t known that every step she took carried her family’s future… 🧵 You’re Invited 🧶 A massive thank you to everyone that joined the last workshop which always turns into a ‘gün’🍛 From Bundles to Crochet stories… Exciting News!