About our guests
Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and storyteller. She has published 21 books, 13 of which are novels and her books have been translated into 58 languages. The Island of Missing Trees was a finalist for the Costa Award, British Book Awards, RSL Ondaatje Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction 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 Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for The Queen’s Reading Room. There are Rivers in the Sky won the Edward Stanford Award 2025, Prix Fragonard de Littérature Étrangère, and was a finalist for the Prix Fémina Étranger and The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Her latest novel, In One Brief Moment All Eternity, was published by Viking in October 2026.
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. She also holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College. Shafak is a Fellow and President of the Royal Society of Literature and has been chosen among BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women. She is a Public Humanities Fellow at the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) in recognition of her work to shape the future of Public Humanities, deepen its reach and expand its impact.
An advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker. She contributes to major publications around the world, and she was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people “who will give you a much-needed lift of the heart”. She has judged numerous literary prizes, including The PEN Nabokov Prize and has chaired the Wellcome Prize. Shafak is the recipient of the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to ‘the renewal of the art of storytelling’. In 2024, Shafak was awarded the British Academy President’s Medal for ‘her excellent body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range’. In 2026, she was appointed British chair of the jury of the Prix de l’Entente Littéraire. Her website can be found at www.elifshafak.com and her Substack is called “Unmapped Storylands”.
Fiammetta Rocco
Fiammetta Rocco was born in Kenya, of Franco-Italian parents, and read Arabic at Oxford. For almost 25 years she was the culture editor of The Economist, and is now a writer and critic based in London. She is the Emeritus Director of the International Booker Prize, having run it for two decades, and is an energetic advocate of reading and story-telling. Fiammetta has been the judge of numerous prizes for fiction and non-fiction. Her writing has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic. She is the chair of the 2026 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
