Three Daughters of Eve (Shafak) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—October 25, 1970
• Where—Strasbourg, France
• Education—M.A., Ph.D., Middle East Technical University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK


Elif Shafak, a Turkish author, columnist, and professor, is Turkey's most well-known female novelist.
Writing in both Turkish and English, she has published 15 books, 10 of which are novels, blending Eastern and Western traditions of storytelling on subjects such as women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, and youth. Her writings reflect her interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics.

Şafak was born Elif Bilgin in Strasbourg to philosopher Nuri Bilgin and Şafak Atayman, who later became a diplomat. After her parents' separation, Şafak was raised by her mother.[6] She says not growing up in a typical patriarchal family had a great impact on her work and writing. She incorporated her mother's first name—Turkish for "dawn"—with her own when constructing her pen name.
Cosmopolitan identity
Şafak spent her teenage years in Madrid and Amman before returning to Turkey. She has lived around the world—Boston, Michigan, Arizona, Istanbul and London—and her writing has thrived upon these journeys. She sees herself as not just migrating from country to country, city to city but language to language, even in her native Turkish she believes she plays to the vocabularies of different cultures. Through it all she has maintained a deep attachment to the city of Istanbul, which plays an important part in her fiction. As a result, a sense of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism has consistently characterized both her life and her work.

In 2010 she was awarded the title of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In October 2017 it was announced that Shafak will be the 2017 contributor to the Future Library Project, a collection of 100 literary works commissioned yearly from 2014 to 2114 and kept unread until 2114 when they will be printed as a limited edition anthology. (From .)