Literatureשני בוינג'ו

Shani Boianjiu

Shani Boianjiu is an Israeli writer known for her debut novel The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, published in 2012.

born 1987The People of Forever Are Not AfraidNational Book Foundation 5 Under 35Women's Prize for Fiction longlisting

Born: 30 May 1987, Jerusalem
Occupation: writer
Education: Harvard University, Phillips Exeter Academy

Shani Boianjiu was born in 1987 in Jerusalem

Boianjiu was born in Jerusalem in 1987 to a mother of Iraqi origin and a father born in Romania. She grew up in Ma'alot Tarshiha and Kfar Vradim in the Western Galilee.

She finished Phillips Exeter Academy in 2005. After 2 years in the Israel Defense Forces, she studied at Harvard and graduated in 2011. At Harvard she led the Radcliffe Union of Students, a feminist group, and worked as a junior research partner for the scholar Reuven Snir.

In 2008 she attended summer school at Waseda University in Tokyo, and in 2009 she interned at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. In 2011 the National Book Foundation named her a 5 Under 35 honoree.

Her first novel came out in English in 2012 and was published in 23 countries. In 2013 she was longlisted for the UK's Women's Prize for Fiction, the first Israeli author to be so. Her own Hebrew translation appeared in 2014, and her writing has run in The New York Times and The New Yorker.