Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak (Turkish: Elif Şafak, pronounced [eˈlif ʃaˈfak]; born 25 October 1971) is a Turkish-British writer, storyteller, essayist, academic, public speaker, and women’s rights activist. In English, she publishes under the anglicized spelling of her pen-name ‘Elif Shafak’.

Shafak writes in Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels, including 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, and Three Daughters of Eve. Her books have been translated into fiftyone languages, and she has been awarded Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Shafak is an activist for women’s rights, minority rights, and freedom of speech. She also writes and speaks about a range of issues including global and cultural politics, the future of Europe, Turkey and the Middle East, democracy, and pluralism. She has twice been a TED Global speaker, a member of the Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).In 2017, she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people that will “give you a much needed lift of the heart”.

Early life

Shafak was born in Strasbourg to philosopher Nuri Bilgin and Şafak Atayman, who later became a diplomat. After her parents’ separated, Shafak returned to Ankara, Turkey, where she was raised by her mother and grandmother. She says that growing up in a dysfunctional family was difficult in many ways, but that growing up in a non-patriarchal environment had a positive impact on her. Having grown up without her father, she met her half-brothers for the first time when she was in her mid-twenties.

Shafak added her mother’s first name— Turkish for ‘dawn’—to her own when constructing her pen name at the age of eighteen. Shafak spent her teenage years in Ankara, Madrid, Amman, and Istanbul.

Shafak holds a degree in International Relations, a master’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies, and a Ph.D. in Political Science.She has taught at universities in Turkey. In the United States, she was a fellow at Mount Holyoke College, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and a tenured professor at the University of Arizona. In the U.K., she held the Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford for the 2017–2018 academic year where she is an honorary fellow.