Haunted Histories: Magic, Memory and the Supernatural in Fiction

Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her latest novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, a literary gothic novel set in an Indian Muslim South African community is a USA Today bestseller, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was named Best Books Of 2024 by NPR and Notable African Books for 2024 by Brittle Paper. It was long listed for the Dublin Literary Award and won the 2025 HSS Award for Best Novel.

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 a finalist for the Miles Moreland Writing Scholarship for African Writers and selected as a Mellon Fellow at Stellenbosch University. She is a board member at Imbiza Journal for African Writing and a mentor at Led By Foundation which focuses on developing Muslim women’s education in India. 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 lives in Durban by the sea.

Genevieve Cogman started on Tolkien and Sherlock Holmes at an early age, and has never looked back. On a perhaps more prosaic note, she has an MSc in Statistics with Medical Applications and has wielded this in an assortment of jobs: clinical coder, data analyst and classifications specialist. Although The Invisible Library was her debut novel, she previously worked as a freelance roleplaying-game writer. She is the author of the Invisible Library series and the bestselling Scarlet Revolution trilogy. Genevieve’s hobbies include patchwork, beading, knitting and gaming, and she lives in the north of England.