Karen Jennings

Karen Jennings is a South African writer whose novel An Island was longlisted for the Booker Prize. She is a writer-in-residence at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past, Stellenbosch University, and is writing a novel to contribute to the project.

She was given the K. Sello Duiker Memorial Award in 2021, and has won the Africa Region Prize of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, and the English section of the Maskew Miller Longman Literature Awards. Her first novel, Finding Soutbek, was shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize. She holds a postdoctoral fellowship as part of the Biography of an Uncharted People Project through LEAP (Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past) at Stellenbosch University, and has written a novel, The First of December, and a series of short stories to contribute to the project.

Travels with my Father, an extraordinary memoir, has been a set University text in South Africa, and been successful in India and the UK.

Karen established The Island Prize for unpublished African authors to help them get published globally. Now in its third year the prize has helped authors from all over the continent, with both winners being published in the UK.