Karen Jennings was born in Cape Town in 1982. She has published five works of fiction (Finding Soutbek, Away from the Dead, Travels with my Father, Upturned Earth and An Island – which was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize) as well as a collection of poetry, Space Inhabited by Echoes. In 2022 she commenced a postdoctoral fellowship affiliated with the Biography of an Uncharted People project at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.