Many congratulations to St Anne’s Honorary Fellow, Elif Shafak, who has been elected President of the Royal Society of Literature!
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish writer, whose work has been translated into fifty-eight languages. The author of twenty books, thirteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s novel The Island of Missing Trees was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, as well as the British Book Awards and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, 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 a Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for The Queen’s Reading Room book club.
Elif has succeeded Bernardine Evaristo — also an Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s. We are proud to be so strongly represented at the RSL as a college, with Fellow and Tutor Prof. Patrick McGuinness also sitting on the RSL Council.