Perhat Tursun was born in 1969 in Atush, a remote and mountainous county located in the southwest corner of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, along the border with Kyrgyzstan. He earned a BA in Turkology and Literature and an MA in Chaghatay Language at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing. Since 1989, he has worked as a folklore researcher at the Xinjiang People's Arts Center in Ürümqi, Xinjiang's capital city, and as a poet, essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. He is one of the most prominent and most-discussed authors in the Uyghur language today.