Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read female writer in Turkey. She is also a political commentator and an advocate for women’s rights, minority rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. Shafak writes in both Turkish and English and has published 15 books, 10 of which are novels, including the bestselling “The Bastard of Istanbul” and “The Forty Rules of Love.” Her books have been translated into 47 languages. Shafak is a TED Global speaker, a member of the Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy in Davos, and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). In 2010, she served as a Special Envoy for the EU-Turkey Cultural Bridges Programme and was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In 2020, she was a judge for the PEN Nabokov Prize.