Karen Jennings

South African author Karen Jennings‘ novel An Island was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021, her next novel, Crooked Seeds was longlisted for The Women’s Prize in 2025. For three years she was writer-in-residence as a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past, Stellenbosch University, where she formed the ideas that have led to First of December. Karen founded The Island Prize for unpublished African authors to help them get published globally. Now in its fifth year the prize has helped authors from all over the continent.