She moved to Istanbul when she was 10 years old and attended the Austrian Girls' High School ( Avusturya Lisesi ) without graduating.
[4] Özlü was portrayed by Yelda Reynaud in her ex-husband Erden Kıral's film Yolda, in which she describes events during the shooting of the movie Yol.
Following in the footsteps of three writers who had a profound effect on her, Svevo, Kafka and Pavese, her second novel was published in 1983 as Auf den Spuren eines Selbstmords (In Search of a Suicide).
The book, which won the 1983 Marburg Literary Award, was broadly rewritten by the author in Turkish as Yaşamın Ucuna Seyahat, published in 1984.
[6] In addition, Özlü's book, Her Şeyin Sonundayım, consisting of her correspondence with her writer friend Ferit Edgü, was published in 2010 by SEL Yayıncılık.