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A. Igoni Barrett
A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria in 1979. He is the author of Blackass, as well as a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency.
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A.B. De Villers
Abraham Benjamin “AB” de Villiers is a South African cricketer who captains the South African Test and One Day International teams, and is regarded as the best batsman in the world at present and one of the best of all time.
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Ace Moloi
Ace Moloi is a Social Media Community Manager, Website Content Writer and Corporate Journalist based in Johannesburg, Gauteng, who cut his teeth at the Johannesburg Roads Agency (SOC) Ltd. A freelance editor with editorial experience in youth publications, and a former award-winning student leader. Holds a BA degree in Corporate and Marketing Communication from the University […]
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Achmat Dangor
Achmat Dangor is an award-winning poet and novelist whose titles include Kafka’s Curse (1997) and the 2004 Booker shortlisted title Bitter Fruit. Until recently Dangor was the Chief Executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He lives and works in Johannesburg.
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Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani (born in 1976) is a Nigerian novelist, humorist, essayist and journalist. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to you by Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award. It was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best […]
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Adriaan Basson
Adriaan Basson is an award-winning South African journalist and editor. He cut his teeth at the Afrikaans daily newspaper Die Beeld in 2003, where he was later to become editor. In 2016 he was appointed as editor of South Africa’s largest news site, News24.
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Adrian Lackay
Adrian Lackay is a former spokesperson for SARS. Before he started at the tax authority in 2003, he worked as a journalist and political correspondent.
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Aher Arop Bol
Aher Arop Bol was born in a Dinka village in the Bahr el Ghazal region of Southern Sudan. The journey described in The Lost Boy is the author’s own. Bol now lives in Pretoria. He runs a spaza shop which enables him to pay his UNISA fees (he is studying law) and maintain his two […]
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Ahmed Kathrada
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (born 21 August 1929, sometimes known by the nickname “Kathy”) is a South African politician and former political prisoner and anti-apartheid activist. Kathrada’s involvement in the anti-apartheid activities of the African National Congress (ANC) led him to his long-term imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial, in which he was held at Robben Island […]
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Alan Cowell
Alan S. Cowell is an award-winning New York Times journalist. He was assigned to Johannesburg in the mid-1980s and was awarded the prestigious George Polk Award for courageous reporting. The government of the day ordered him to leave in early 1987 and he was not allowed to return until the early 1990s. Since then he […]
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Alan Paton
Alan Paton, a native son of South Africa, was born in Pietermaritzburg, in the province of Natal, in 1903. Paton’s initial career was spent teaching in schools for the sons of rich, white South Africans, But at thirty, he suffered a severe attack of enteric fever, and in the time he had to reflect upon […]
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Albert Jansen
The late Professor Albert Jansen was born in The Netherlands and became fascinated by astronomy at a young age. He obtained an MSc degree in astronomy at Leyden University and managed the Planetarium in The Hague for a number of years. In 1995, Albert and his wife Ellie immigrated to South Africa, where they established […]
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Alexis Okeowo
Alexis Okeowo is an American journalist who is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Woman and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa
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Ama Ata Aidoo
Ama Ata Aidoo, née Christina Ama Aidoo is a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic. She was also a Minister of Education in Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration. She currently lives in Ghana, where in 2000 she established the Mbaasem Foundation to promote and support the work of African women writers
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Amara Nicole Okolo
Amara is a young lawyer living in Abuja. She loves cupcakes, green tea and her tabby kitten, Timber. One of her life-long dreams is to bungee-jump from the Victoria Falls, but for now she is settling for hiking up the hill near her house. Black Sparkle Romance is her first novel.
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Ambre Nicolson
Ambre Nicolson is a writer and editor who lives in Cape Town. Before and after obtaining degrees in English and journalism at Rhodes University, she was a cleaner in London, a wall painter in Barcelona, a language student in Shanghai, a book researcher in New York, a teacher in Taipei and a magazine editor in Cape […]
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Aminatta Forna
Aminatta Forna, OBE (born 1964) is a Scottish writer. Forna was born in Bellshill, Scotland, in 1964 to a Sierra Leonean father, Mohamed Forna, and a Scottish mother, Maureen Christison. When Forna was six months old the family travelled to Sierra Leone, where Mohamed Forna worked as a physician. She is the author of a […]
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Andrew Brown
Andrew Brown is an author, an advocate and a reservist sergeant in the South African Police Service. While a student in the 1980s he was arrested after confrontation with police and was sentenced to imprisonment. On appeal, the Cape High Court overturned the sentence and imposed community service instead. Brown now practises as an advocate […]
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Andrew Smith
Andy Smith is an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Cape Town.
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Andrew Whaley
Andrew Whaley writes plays for stage, screen and radio. He travels to East and West Africa to make radio serial dramas. His play, ‘The Rise and Shine of Comrade Fiasco’, was published in the first Methuen Anthology of Contemporary African Theatre. He wrote a memoir of South African pop legend, Brenda Fassie. His latest play, […]
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Angela Makholwa
Angela Makholwa lives and works in Johannesburg. Her debut novel, Red Ink (2007), is a gripping psychological thriller. This was followed by the entertaining escapades and sexual misadventures of modern women in The 30th Candle (2009). Black Widow Society marks a return to a thrilling, crime-ridden world.
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Anna Trapido
Anna Trapido is a food anthropologist who has an MA from Cambridge University and a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is also a trained chef and author of the award-winning book ‘Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela’.
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Annabel Frere
When her younger daughter was in high school, Annabel Frere was asked to run the school tuck-shop. Together with voluntary helpers, they devised wholesome daily menus and shared each other’s foolproof recipes. Many of the mothers at the school expressed interest in a cookbook aimed at school leavers and young adults, and so the idea […]
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Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob
Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob is an award-winning former political journalist. She was a radio and television presenter, and has worked for the United Nations in New York; in Namibia on the UNTAG mission leading up to Namibia’s independence; and on the UNPROFOR mission during the war in Bosnia, where she spent two years in […]
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Anthony Butler
Anthony Butler is Professor of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town. He has previously been a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Director of the Politics and Administration Programme at Birkbeck College, University of London; and Chair in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Butler is the author of four books and […]