Bio:
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.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Literary Agency
Curtis Brown
Speaking Engagements
Chartwell
London Speakers Bureau
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Awards and Special Recognitions
Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize 2019 judging panel.
Honorary Fellow at St. Anne’s College, Oxford University.
Patron of National Centre For Writing in Norwich, UNESCO City of Literature
Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in Comparative European Literature at Oxford
Berggruen Prize Juror for Philosophy & Culture
Judge for The Goldsmiths Prize 2018
Future Library Author 2017, Oslo, Norway
Caravan Award for Peacebuilding Through the Arts, 2017
Prize for Tolerance in Thinking and Acting, Prize of Honour of the Austrian Booksellers, 2017
Judge for The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award, 2017
Member of Berggruen Prize Award Committee
WOW committee member
Lahore Literary Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2016
Granted the Seal of the City and Certificate of Commendation by the City of Milan, 2016
2016 GTF Award for Excellence in Promoting Gender Equality
Judge for 2017 Man Booker International Prize
Judge for FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards, 2016
Judge for the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Cultural Leader; Member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy, Davos 2016
Judge for the 10th Women of the Future Awards, 2015
Judge for FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards, 2015
Asian Women of Achievement Awards 2015: Global Empowerment Award
The Architect's Apprentice, shortlisted for RSL Ondaatje Prize, 2015
The Architect's Apprentice, longlisted for Walter Scott Historical Novel Prize, 2015
Judge for Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards, 2015
Board Member of Free Word Centre, which promotes literacy, literature and freedom of expression
Member of English PEN
Cultural ambassador for The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art/ BOZAR
Member of the judging panel for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award two consecutive years (2014, 2015)
Cultural Leader; Member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy, Davos 2014
Member of the Folio Academy
Women To Watch Award, March 2014, Mediacat & Advertising Age
Honour (Crime d’honneur, Phébus), Prix du livre Lorientales 2014
Honour (Crime d’honneur, Phébus) le prix Escapades, 2014
Honour, Nominated (longlisted) for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2013
Turkish American Society Young Society Leader, 2013
Honour (Crime d’honneur, Phébus), 2013 Prix Relay des voyageurs, France 2013
Honour, Longlisted for Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2013
Member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on The Role of Arts in Society
Member of the 2013 judging panel for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Honour, Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, 2012
The Forty Rules of Love, Nominated (longlisted) for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2012
The Forty Rules of Love (Soufi, mon amour, Phébus), Prix ALEF - Mention Spéciale Littérature Etrangère, France 2011
Marka 2010 Award, Turkey
Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, France, 2010
TED Global speaker
Ambassador of Culture Action Europe Campaign, 2010
Special Envoy, EU-Turkey Cultural Bridges Programme, 2010
Turkish Journalists and Writers Foundation "The Art of Coexistence Award-2009"
International Rising Talent, Women's Forum - Deauville, France 2009
The Bastard of Istanbul, Longlisted for Orange Prize for Fiction, London 2008
Founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations)
The Gaze, Longlisted for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, United Kingdom 2007
Maria Grazia Cutuli Award - International Journalism Prize, Italy 2006
The Flea Palace, Shortlisted for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, United Kingdom 2005
The Gaze, Union of Turkish Writers' Best Novel Prize, 2000
Pinhan, The Great Rumi Award, Turkey 1998
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).