London, UK Turkey's best-selling female author
Knowledgeable and inspirational speaker on issues of equality, identity, new humanism and spirituality in the 21st century, the politics of Turkey, the Middle East and Europe
Influential social media activist with over 1.7 million Twitter followers
Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels, including the bestselling The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, and Three Daughters of Eve. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. She is published by Penguin/Random House and represented by Curtis Brown globally. She was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better.
Shafak is also a political scientist and an academic. She holds a degree in International Relations, a masters’ degree in Gender and Women’s Studies and a PhD in Political Science and Political Philosophy. She has taught at various universities in Turkey, the UK and the USA, including St Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow.
Shafak is a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women’s rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED Global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation.
Shafak has been featured in and contributes to major newspapers and periodicals around the world, including the Financial Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel and La Repubblica. She has been longlisted for the Orange Prize, MAN Asian Prize; the Baileys Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize
She judged numerous prestigious literary prizes, including Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2013); Sunday Times Short Story Award (2014, 2015), Women of the Future Awards (2015); FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards (twice in 2015, 2016); Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (2016); Man Booker International Prize (2017) and The Goldsmiths Prize (2018). This year Shafak is judging the Berggruen Culture and Philosophy Prize, and chairs the Wellcome Book Prize.
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"An eloquent and deeply inspiring speaker, Elif has a powerful way of weaving world affairs into the art of storytelling. She engages with different audiences remarkably well, moving from personal-human stories to intellectual, political and sociological analyses. Creativity, innovation, storytelling, coexistence, multiculturalism, "east meets west", a new spirituality in a new age, women, and the future of Turkey, the Middle East and Europe are among the many themes she talks and writes about."