MA in Creative Writing

Teachers and Supervisors

MA in Creative Writing, Rhodes University
Teachers and Supervisors for 2011 and 2012

Robert Berold has published four collections of poetry and has had many poems published in journals and anthologies locally and abroad. Twenty of his poems have been turned into songs by guitarist Larry Strelitz. He has also published practical manuals, a memoir of a year spent in China, and co-written an “autobiography” of a pioneering Lesotho farmer. As editor of New Coin from 1989 to 1999, he sought out much groundbreaking new poetry, and in 2002 edited an anthology of this work. He has edited thirty books by South African poets, several of them under the Deep South imprint. He has been teaching writing since 1976.

People's Workbook (EDA, 1981) (technical manual)(editor)
The Door to the River (Bateleur, 1984) (poetry)
The Fires of the Dead (Carrefour, 1989) (poetry)
Rain Across a Paper Field (Gecko, 1999) (poetry)
It All Begins: poems from postliberation South Africa (Gecko, 2002) (editor)
South African Poets on Poetry: Interviews from New Coin (Gecko, 2003) (editor)
Drive Out Hunger (Jacana, 2003) (biography, co-author)
Meanwhile Don’t Push and Squeeze (2007) (memoir)
All the Days (Deep South, 2008) (poetry)
Seven Variations on a Poem by Du Fu (Aerial Publishing, 2010) (editor)

Hazel Crampton is an artist who has held several solo exhibitions of paintings. She has worked in the film industry as a storyboard artist for many years, on feature films ranging from the Oscar-award winning Last King of Scotland, to mega-special effects movies like Doomsday, to the Hansie Cronje story, Hansie. She has also worked as production designer and art director on hundreds of commercials. The Sunburnt Queen, her non-fiction account of the castaways on the Wild Coast, was published in 2004. Currently she is working with Jeff Peires editing a book on Beutler's expedition to the Eastern Cape in 1752, and working on a new book about ancient southern African trade routes.

The Sunburnt Queen (Jacana, 2004) (history)

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Russell Kaschula is professor of African Language Studies and Head of the School of Languages at Rhodes University, and the recipient a number of international academic awards and fellowships. His research interests range from intercultural communication to African oral literature. He is the author of many academic papers, and has written short stories and novels in both isiXhosa and English. His literary awards include the Nadine Gordimer/COSAW prize for short story writing, the Nasou-Via Afrika literature prize and the International Board of Books for Young People’s Honour list.

The Bones of the Ancestors are shaking:
Xhosa oral poetry in context (Juta, 2002)
Divine Dump Dancer (New Africa Books, 2002) (youth novel)
Flying High (New Africa Books, 2003) (youth novel)
Boy in da City (New Africa Books, 2004) (youth novel – co-author)
Mugabe was right. For the wrong reasons. (Pondo Press, 2006) (satirical novel)
Take me to the River (New Africa Books, 2006) (novel)
Emthonjeni (New Africa Books,2006) (novel in isiXhosa)
Mama, I Sing to You (Bateleur, 2006) (novel)
Intambanane. isiXhosa poetry (Juta-Gariep, 2006) (editor)
Qhiwu-u-u-la!! Return to the Fold!! A collection of Bongani Sitole’s performance poetry (Via Afrika, 2006) (editor)

Anton Krueger writes drama, poetry, prose, filmscripts; as well as academic journal articles and criticism on books, plays, films and fine art. His plays (including the well-known Living in Strange Lands: The Testimony of Dimitri Tsafendas) have been performed in nine countries, and have been nominated for numerous awards, including the FNB-Vita and Olive Schreiner. His poems have been published widely in literary journals, and a recent poem, Nine Notes on Lisbon was a runner-up for the 2009 Dalro prize. His first novel, Sunnyside Sal, was published in 2010.

Mediocrity (UK Plays & Musicals, London, 2002) (playscript)
Vanessa & the Vanguard (UK Plays & Musicals, London, 2002) (playscript)
The Velvet City (UK Plays & Musicals, London, 2002) (playscript)
In the Blue Beaker – a Comedy about Suicide (Playscripts, New York, 2001)
Axis (Stagescripts, London, 2007)
Living in Strange Lands: the Testimony of Dimitri Tsafendas (Playscripts, New York, 2003)
What shall we do now and other one-act plays. (Macmillan, 2009) (2 playscripts in this anthology)
Sunnyside Sal (Deep South, 2010) (novella)
Experiments in Freedom: Explorations of Identity in New South African Drama (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010)

Mzi Mahola is the author of three books of poems, one of which won the Oliver Schreiner Prize. His work has been published in journals and anthologies in South Africa and abroad, and translated into several languages. He has also written two unpublished novels and directed three of his own plays. In 2004 he started a poetry reading and writing project at his local library in Zwide. He has conducted numerous creative writing workshops in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and is currently running a creative writing project for rural schools in Lushington near Seymour.

Strange Things (Snailpress, 1994) (poetry)
When Rains Come (Carapace, 2000) (poetry)
Dancing in the Rain (UKZN Press, 2006) (poetry)

Paul Mason has published poetry, prose and critical reviews in journals and anthologies. In 1987 he co-wrote a play – Dream Court – that was performed at the Wits Theatre. He has a special interest in screenwriting, which has formed the basis of writing workshops he has run for the past 13 years. He is currently gathering oral testimony for a collection of poems on responses to conscription into the SADF in the 1980s.

Comeback: Poems in Conversation 1984-1989 (Botsotso/Bodhi Books, 2009) (poetry)

Joan Metelerkamp is the author of seven books of poems, the last four of which are poem sequences or book-length poems. Recently she wrote a lengthy essay on South African poetry since 1990 for a French publication. ‘This process’ she writes ‘threw up many questions about the place and purpose of poetry, made me rethink the how and why of poetry. Having given up on why I am moving back to the minutiae of how.’ She has been reading recent work by American poets Campbell McGrath, Louise Gluck, C.D.Wright, and Jean Valentine.

Towing The Line (Carrefour, 1992) (poetry)
Stone No More (Gecko,1995) (poetry)
Into the day breaking (Gecko, 2000) (poetry)
Floating Islands (Mokoro, 2001) (poetry)
Requiem (Deep South, 2003) (poetry)
Carrying the fire (substancebooks, 2005) (poetry)
Burnt Offering (Modjaji, 2009) (poetry)

Mxolisi Nyezwa was born in 1967 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth and still lives there, at 4 Madala Street. He is the author of two books of poems, and founder and editor of Kotaz, a bilingual literary magazine based in the Eastern Cape. In 2009 he won the Thomas Pringle award for poetry. He runs a spaza shop from a container in an informal housing settlement in Motherwell township, selling vetkoek, loose cigarettes and airtime to the community.

Song Trials (Gecko, 2000) (poetry)
New Country (UKZN Press, 2008) (poetry)

Jeff Peires is the author of two books on Xhosa history: The House of Phalo (1981) and The Dead Will Arise (1989), which won the Sunday Times Alan Paton prize for the best South African work of non-fiction published the previous year. After teaching at Rhodes and the old University of Transkei, he became ANC MP for Ngcobo in 1994. From 1996 to 2006, he worked for the Eastern Cape Government in Queenstown, Bhisho and Tsolo/Qumbu. He has recently retired from politics and government to get back to writing, and is currently working on a comprehensive history of the Eastern Cape. He is interim head of the Cory Library at Rhodes University.

The House of Phalo (Ravan Press, 1981) (history)
The Dead Will Arise (Ravan Press, 1989) (history)

Brian Walter lives in Port Elizabeth and used to live in the Alice area. His writing is grounded in the landscape and people of the Eastern Cape. He is the author of three books of poems and co-author (with Felicity Wood) of a textbook on poetry, and his poetry has won both the Thomas Pringle award and the Ingrid Jonker Prize. With other poets from Fort Hare, he is a member of an informal group called Ecca Poets, which has included Cathal Lagan, Norman Morrissey, and the late Basil Somhlahlo. Brian has taught creative writing at Fort Hare and at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

Groundwork (Macmillan Boleswa, 1997) (poetry texbook) (co-editor)
Tracks (Lovedale, 1999) (poetry)
Baakens (Lovedale, 2000) (poetry)
Mousebirds (Seaberg, 2008) (poetry)

Paul Wessels founded Deep South Distribution, a mail order bookselling venture, and co-founded Deep South Publishing with Robert Berold. After editing Alan Finlay's online lit.zine donga, he founded and edited sweetmagazine.co.za and publishing imprint substancebooks. He has recently assisted with editing the seven-volume Black Coat Press translation of the works of the founder of modern science fiction, J-H Rosny Aîné (1856-1940), contributing an afterword on the intersection of Rosny Aîné, Philip José Farmer and Gilles Deleuze. He is currently working on a novel provisionally titled The Reticulator which explores univocity, colonialism and science fiction. He reads very little of very much.

my ghost in the bush of lies (deep south, 2005) (novel)

  
Laurence Wright is Director of the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) and director of the MA programme in Creative Writing. His 9 books, 17 book chapters, and over 100 academic articles, have been published in South Africa, the USA, Australia, Holland, Belgium, Poland and the UK. He has written theatre and book reviews, edited an academic journal, managed three journals over a twenty year period, designed books, taught writing to teachers and students, and run academic writing seminars. Work in press includes a collection of essays on Australasian Shakespeare, two articles on South African railway poetry, a chapter on irony and transcendence on the Renaissance stage, and an essay on the poetry of Don Maclennan.

Teaching English Literature in South Africa: Twenty Essays (ISEA, 1990) (editor and contributor)
Getting the Message in South Africa: Intelligibility, Readability, Comprehensibility (Brevitas, 1995) (editor and contributor)
Stimela: Railway Poems from South Africa (Echoing Green, 2008) (editor and contributor) South African Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century (Ashgate, 2009) (editor and contributor) The Australasian Spread of Shakespeare (Lodz, forthcoming 2011) (editor and contributor)

Ingrid Winterbach has published nine novels in Afrikaans, the first five under the pseudonymn Lettie Viljoen. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Hertzog Prize, the M-Net Book Prize (three times), the W.A. Hofmeyr Prize (twice) and the University of Johannesburg Prize for Fiction. Her books have been translated into English and Dutch. She is also a visual artist, and recently a dramatist, with a well received first play Spyt (Remorse). Winterbach is married to the painter Andries Gouws.

 Klaaglied vir Koos (Taurus, 1984)

Erf  (Taurus, 1986)

Belemmering  (Taurus, 1990)

Karolina Ferreira  (Human & Rousseau, 1993)

Landskap met vroue en slang (Human & Rousseau, 1996)

Buller se plan (Human & Rousseau, 1999)

Niggie (Human & Rousseau, 2002)

The Elusive Moth (translation of Karolina Ferreira, Human & Rousseau, 2005)

Die Boek van toeval en toeverlaat (Human & Rousseau, 2006)

To Hell with Cronjé (translation of Niggie, Human & Rousseau 2007; Open Letter Press, Rochester, New York: 2010)

The Book of Happenstance (translation of Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat,  Human & Rousseau 2008; Open Letter Press, Rochester, New York, 2011)

Die Benederyk (Human & Rousseau, 2010)

Godfrey Meintjes is head of Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies in the School of Languages  at Rhodes University, and is also responsible in the interdepartmental  Modern Fiction course. He specialises in contemporary Afrikaans fiction, Literary Theory and Narratology.  He has published articles in scholarly journals and chapters in books, nationally and internationally, on Rereading traditional Afrikaans prose texts, Postcoloniality, and History and Fiction. He is regularly invited to examine creative writing dissertations from other universities, and has adjudicated some national literary prizes.

Rian Malan is a writer, journalist, documentary TV presenter and
songwriter. He has written for international newspapers and magazines including
Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Spectator, and Granta.
His internationally-acclaimed 1980s book on South Africa, My Traitor’s Heart,
was translated into 11 languages. In 2000 Rolling Stone published ‘In
the Jungle’ his story of the ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ and its composer Solomon
Linda. A selection of the best of his writing was published in 2009
as Resident Alien.

My Traitor’s Heart (Grove Press, 1989)

Resident Alien (Jonathan Ball, 2009)

Joanne Hichens has degrees in art and
psychology, and an MA in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. She
has worked as an artist, lecturer, facilitator at a psychiatric clinic, fiction
editor, journalist, creative writing supervisor, short story writer, and
novelist. She lives in Cape Town with her husband and three children.  Joanne
is interested in exploring the fractured nature of society through her own
crime fiction. 

 Out To Score co-authored with Mike Nicol (Umuzi,
2006) (crime novel, reprinted as Cape Greed, Minotaur, New York, 2009)

Bad Company crime-fiction short stories by SA
authors (editor) (Pan Macmillan, 2008)

Stained (Ransom, UK, 2009)(young adult novel)

The Bed Book of Short Stories (editor)(Modjaji Books, 2010)

Divine Justice (Mercury, 2011) (crime novel)