Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France in 1971 and lived extensively in Spain before returning to Turkey, where she published four novels which gained both critical and popular acclaim. Her first novel, Pinhan (The Sufi), tells the story of a hermaphrodite mystic and was awarded the Rumi Prize – a recognition given to the best works in mystical/transcendental literature. Shafak’s second novel, The Mirrors of the City, brings together Jewish and Islamic characters in Istanbul and opens up questions on estrangement and deterioration. Titled Mahrem (Hide-and-Seek), Shafak’s third novel, for which she received the Turkish Novel Award, travels between 17th-century Siberia, 19th-century France and 1980s Istanbul. Her fourth novel, Bit Palas (The Flea Palace) became an instant national bestseller and earned acclaim from Turkish authors such as Orhan Pamuk. The Flea Palace is a humorously narrated story of an apartment building where all the characters and stories are interlaced to develop the theme of "the seen and unseen degradation" – moral, physical, social as well as cultural – in the heart of Istanbul. The novel was translated into English and published by Marion Boyars in the United Kingdom.

In addition to her career as a novelist, Shafak is also a social scientist and holds degrees in Gender and Women’s Studies as well as Political Science from the Middle East Technical University. She has taught at the University of Michigan as a visiting scholar, and began a tenure-track position in fall 2004 in the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of Arizona (Tucson) where she is a professor of Turkish and Women’s Studies.