The first time I heard about Elif Shafak was when I saw an event invite circulated to Creative Writing students saying that she’d be speaking with Professor Richard Cohen and signing books at the Rose Theatre on 7th March. She’s an award-winning Turkish novelist who blends Eastern and Western traditions of storytelling.
What peaked my interest was that the invite was sent out by one of the faculty saying that ‘she was soon to be a worldwide literary figure.’ I decided to test this theory out for myself.
I don’t know about you but my litmus test nowadays is to check whether a writer has their own website (check) and then check whether they are on TED talks (double check). I mean, Wow! The woman is a gifted storyteller and eloquent to boot. If you’ve ever spent a second wondering about your identity as a writer – especially if you were raised with non-Western roots, you’ll find something here that strikes a chord.
Shafak speaks about ‘cultural cocoons’ as cultural ‘ghettoes’ we create by putting walls up to kill everything within that thick circle including imagination. She speaks about superstition and spirituality in Turkey, throws in Sufism and Rumi like it is a second language to her and eludes to the whirling dervishes within writers. There is a memorable moment she describes when she was in Istanbul during the 1999 earthquake and she rushed out to see her extremely conservative local grocer sitting next to a transvestite with a black wig, offering him a cigarette. That’s what she thinks of first when she thinks of the earthquake now.
Its worth listening to the first fifteen minutes is only to get to the last quarter of the talk where she says that students of Creative Writing courses are told “Write what you know.” She advocates that this is limiting, stunted. Instead Shafak says, “Write what you can feel.”
I’m sold. I can’t wait to hear the woman in person.
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