Nuran David Çalış was born in 1976 in Bielefeld, the son of Armenian-Jewish immigrants from Turkey. He worked as a bouncer, studied directing at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich and produced music clips for hip-hop bands. He now works as a director, playwright, and screenwriter. He has received numerous prizes for his works and productions, including the 2006 Bavarian Art Prize in the literature section. In 2008 his first feature film, Meine Mutter, mein Bruder und ich (My Mother, My Brother and Me), was released, in 2010 he filmed Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) for ZDF, and in 2012 Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. In 2011 S. Fischer published Çalış’s first novel, Der Mond ist unsere Sonne (The Moon is Our Sun). Most recently, on the 10th anniversary of the nail bomb attack in Cologne’s Keupstraße, he developed together with residents of the street and those affected by the bombing Die Lücke – Ein Stück Keupstraße (The Gap – A Play about the Keupstraße) for the Schauspiel Cologne; the work caused a sensation. Çalış lives in Munich.
 
Nuran David Çalış was a resident at Tarabya Cultural Academy from December 2014 to April 2015.