For years we have been waiting to see what the literature of post ?aparthied South Africa will look like. Now Zo‰ Wicomb delivers the goods. A tremendous achievement.? J. M. Coetzee
Zo‰ Wicomb?s complex and deeply evocative fiction is among the most distinguished recent works of South African women?s literature. It is also among the only works of fiction to explore the experience of ?Coloured? citizens in apartheid-era South Africa, whose mixed heritage traps them, as Bharati Mukherjee wrote in the New York Times, ?in the racial crucible of their country.? Zo‰ Wicomb was born in 1948 and raised in Namaquland, South Africa. After 20 years voluntary exile, she returned to South Africa in 1991 to teach at the University of the West Cape. She currently lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. Among Zo‰ Wicomb?s books are You Can?t Get Lost in Cape Town (Feminist Press).
Poet, lecturer, educator Calvin Forbes currently serves as an associate professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been widely published in magazines - and in the anthologies New Black Voices, Contemporary American Poetry and, In Search of Color Everywhere. His books include ? Blue Monday, From the Book of Shine and his latest, The Shine Poems ( Louisiana State University Press). Hazel Rochman is Editor, Young Adult Books and Booklist, the Reviewing Journal of the American Library Association. She edited the collection Somehow tenderness Survives: Stories of Southern Africa. Her book Against Borders won the G.W. Hall Award for Library Literature. She will talk about her experience growing up in South Africa, as an immigrant in Chicago, and as a book reviewer.