Shubnum Khan

Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her US and UK debut novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, 'a sweeping literary gothic coming-of-age novel set on the east coast of South Africa' is forthcoming from Viking (US) in Jan 2024 and Oneworld Publications (UK) in Feb 2024.

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 has published short stories in South African anthologies Instant Exposure (2018), Hair (2019) and Our Ghosts Were Once People (2021).

She has a degree in Media Studies and a Master's in English from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a writing fellow at OMI’s Ledig House 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.

When she is not travelling she lives in Durban, where the warmest waters meet the bluest skies.