The Penguin Speakers Bureau

Elif Shafak is the best-selling female writer in Turkey and the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of English-language novels The Saint of Incipient Insanities and The Bastard of Istanbul. Shafak’s latest novel, The Forty Rules of Love, was a number one bestseller in Turkey and was published in the U.S. earlier this year. Read in 23 languages worldwide, her work has been lauded for blending Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling to generate a fiction that is both culturally unique and universally appealing. Shafak’s deep involvement in feminism, Sufism, and Ottoman culture, as well as her open criticism of bigotry and xenophobia, have made her a prominent political and cultural figure in Turkey.

In addition to her fiction writing, Shafak has published Med-Cezir, a non-fiction book of essays on gender, sexuality, exile, and identity politics, and Black Milk, a memoir about Sufism and postpartum depression. Her articles have appeared in numerous Turkish and international publications, including The Guardian, Le Monde, Berliner Zeitung, Dutch Handelsbladt, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Time magazine. She has taught courses on gender and Turkish culture at the University of Michigan, the University of Arizona, İstanbul Bilgi University, and Istanbul Bahcesehir University.

She currently divides her time between the United States and Turkey, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Check out Elif Shafak’s website here.