Shubnum: Pronounced Shubb-numb
Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her latest novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, a literary gothic coming-of-age novel set in an Indian South African community is out with Viking (US), Oneworld Publications (UK) and PanMacmillan (SA). It is a USA Today bestseller, a New York Times Editor's Choice, named Best Books Of 2024 by NPR and selected as Brittle Paper's Notable African Books. It was long listed for the Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for The Book Lounge Book of the Year and won the HSS Award for Best Novel. It has been translated into Italian and Ukranian.
Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, HuffPost, O the Oprah Magazine, The Sunday Times, New Contrast, and Saraba Magazine.
She is always interested in stories about connection between human beings, the experience of womanhood, the forming of identities including the Indian, Muslim, South African and single experience, how we process grief, make memory and the pursuit of hope.
She is a writing fellow at Writers OMI in New York, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and she is an Octavia Butler Fellow at Jack Jones Literary Arts. She was shortlisted for the Miles Moreland Writing Scholarship for African Writers and selected as a Mellon Fellow at Stellenbosch University in 2019. She is a board member at Imbiza Journal for African Writing and a mentor at Led By Foundation which focuses on developing Muslim girls' education in India.
She is represented by Julia Kardon at HG Literary and Dana Spector at CAA.
