Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish writer, whose work has been translated into fifty-eight languages. The author of twenty books, thirteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s novel The Island of Missing Trees was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, as well as the British Book Awards and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize, and was a Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for The Queen’s Reading Room book club.

Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. Shafak is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and has been chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women. An advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker. She has been awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in 2024, was awarded the British Academy President’s Medal for ‘her excellent body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range’.