Karina Magdalena Szczurek is the author and (co)editor of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction. She won the HSS Award for Best Fiction Edited Volume in 2024. She also received the Thomas Pringle Award for a portfolio of ad hoc reviews from the English Academy of Southern Africa in 2018 and won the MML Literature Award in the Category English Drama in 2012. She is a board member of Short Story Day Africa. In 2019, she founded Karavan Press, an independent publishing house, and a year later, she established the Philida Literary Award. She lives in Cape Town.