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• Watson, Stephen

  Stephen Watson was born in Cape Town in 1954. He is the author of nine collections of poetry and three books of non-fiction, many of which were focused on the city of Cape Town. He attended the University of Cape Town as an undergraduate student to study English. He also received a master's and doctorate from the same university and went on to work as a professor in the English department at that institution. Along with teaching and writing, he served as the editor of a number of books and served as the director of University of Cape Town’s widely acclaimed Centre for Creative Writing. He died in 2011.
• Waberi, Abdourahman

  Abdourahman Waberi was born in 1965 in Djibouti. He is most well known for his books The land without Shadows, Transit, In the United States of Africa and Passage des Larmes. He studied English literature in France and went on to obtain a doctoral degree on emigrant writers at the Paris-Sorbonne. He worked as a literary consultant for Editions Le Serpent à Plumes, Paris, and as a literary critic for Le Monde Diplomatique. He continued on to become a professor of French, francophone studies and creative writing at George Washington University.
• Loutard, Jean-Baptiste 'Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard'

  Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard was born in 1938 in The Democratic Republic of Congo. He was the author of several French books of poetry including, Poems of The Sea, The Congolese Roots, and The Hidden Face of the Sun. He attended the University of Bordeaux in France where he received his undergraduate degree in modern literature. He went on to become a professor at The Centre for Graduate Studies on his return to Congo. After establishing a successful teaching career, he ventured into politics, serving as Minister of Higher Education, Minister of Arts and Culture, and Minister of Hydrocarbons in the government of Congo-Brazzaville from 1997 to 2009. He was also the founder and president of the Action Movement for Renewal (MAR), a political party. He died in Congo in 2009.
• Small, Adam

  Adam Small was born in 1936 in Wellington, South Africa. He attended the University of Cape Town where he studied languages and philosophy. He went on to receive a master's degree in philosophy from the same university, and studied at the University of London and the University of Oxford as well. He worked as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Fort Hare in 1959, and in 1960 he was one of the academic founders of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) where he was appointed as Head of the Philosophy Department. In the 1970s, he joined the Black Consciousness Movement. In 1973, after the suspension of students protesting against apartheid, he resigned from his position at the university in solidarity with the students. In 1983, he re-joined the university under considerably different circumstances as Head of the Department of Social Work, holding this position until his retirement in 1997. He is the author of several books of poetry in Afrikaans and English. He died in 2016.
• Serote, Mongane

  Mongane Wally Serote was born in 1944 in South Africa. He became involved in the Black Consciousness Movement while in high school. He was linked to the group "Soweto Poets,” and his poems took on themes of political activism, the development of black identity, revolt, and resistance. In 1969, he was arrested by the apartheid government under the Terrorism Act and spent nine months in solitary confinement, before being released without charge. He attended Columbia University, from which he received a master's degree. He lived in exile in Gaborone, Botswana for several years but later returned to South Africa. He is the author of several collections of poems.
• Sepamla, Sydney 'Sydney Sipho Sepamla'

  Sydney Sipho Sepamla was born in 1932 in South Africa. He studied teaching at Pretoria Normal College before attending drama school in the UK in the early 1970s. He published his first volume of poetry, Hurry Up to It!, in 1975. He founded the Federated Union of Black Artists (now the Fuba Academy of Arts) and served as the editor of the literary magazine New Classic and the theatre magazine S’ketsh. Sepamla received several awards for his writing, including the Thomas Pringle Award in 1977 and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He was a member of the government’s Arts and Culture Task Group. He died in 2007.
• Pieterse, Cosmo

  Cosmo Pieterse was born in 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia to South African parents. He obtained a Bachelor's degree and Master's degree at the University of Cape Town. Subsequently, he taught in Cape Town until he was expelled from South Africa in 1965 under the Riotous Assemblies Act. He went on to teach in London, the United States at Ohio University, and Zimbabwe. He also worked for the BBC, and as an actor in a short film directed by notable director Stephen Frears. He has served as the editor of several anthologies of plays and poetry for the Heinemann African Writers series.
• Garisch, Dawn

  Dawn Garisch was born 1958 in Zimbabwe, and moved to South Africa when she was nine. She is the author of two poetry collections: Difficult Gifts (2011) and Disturbance (2020). In 2007, her poem ‘Blood Delta’ was awarded the DALRO prize, and in 2011, her poem ‘Miracle’ won the EU Sol Plaatjie Poetry Award. A novelist and poet, her interest is in trans-disciplinary work in science and art. Garisch is the founder of the Life Righting Collective, a writing course and mentorship program aimed to support writers in South Africa and guide them in engaging writing as a recovery process. She a practicing medical doctor and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
• Fairhead, Barbara

  Barbara Fairhead was born in the UK in 1939, and has lived in South Africa since 1948. She is an award-winning artist, sculptor, fiction writer, and the lyricist for the band Red Earth & Rust. She has published two books of poetry which include "And Now You Have Leapt Up To Swallow the Sun" (1997) and "Word and Bead: The Presentation of a Journey" (2001). Her first novel, "Of Death and Beauty" was published in 2013 by Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its sequel, "Whereof One Cannot Speak" was published in 2017.
• Beckett, Chris

  Beckett was born in 1955. A British social worker, university lecturer, and science fiction author, he has written several textbooks, dozens of short stories, and six novels. He was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and Bryanston School in Dorset, England. He has been a senior lecturer in social work at ARU since 2000. He was a social worker for eight years and the manager of a children and families social work team for ten years. Beckett has authored or co-authored several textbooks and scholarly articles on social work.
• Makuchi, Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi

  Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi was born in 1958 in the South-West Province of Cameroon and raised in North West Province. Writer and critic, she is the author of Our Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon (1999), The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba (2008), among others. In her work, she offers a complex exploration of African stereotypes, gender inequalities grounded in cultural and political contexts and a critique of the postcolonial Cameroonian identity. She received her B.A. in Bilingual Letters, English & French and MA in African Literature from the University of Yaounde. She also holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, after which she immigrated to the United States. From 2012-2018, she served on the Executive Council of the African Literature Association (ALA). She is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Department of English at North Carolina State University.
• Johnson, Sarah

  Sarah Johnson was born in 1980, South Africa. She is most well known for her collection Personae which assumes the identities of a variety of figures, exploring the intersection between the devotional and the erotic, among other things. She went to university of Cape Town for her undergraduate in English and Linguistics. She also received her MA in Creative Writing from University of the Cape Town. Personae was published in 2004 and described by accomplished South African poet, Stephen Watson as “one of the best debut volumes in recent years.”
• Mabanckou, Alain

  Alain Mabanckou was born in Republic of the Congo and grew up in Pointe Noire. A novelist, poet, and academic, Mabanckou is one of the most recognized writers in French contemporary literature. His published poetry collections include Quand le coq annoncera l'aube d'un autre jour (1999), Au jour le jour (1993), L'usure des lendemains (1995), and Les arbres aussi versent des larmes (1997). He has received many awards for his writing, including the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for his novel, Black Moses, and the 2012 Académie Française Grand Prix de littérature Henri Gal for his entire work. He teaches literature and creative writing in the Department of French & Francophone Studies and African Studies Center at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
• Okewole, Niran

  Niran Okewole was born in 1977. He is a psychiatrist, playwright, essayist, and poet. He won the MUSON Festival Poetry Prize in 2002 and 2003 and was a recipient of the Sawubona Music Jam/Berlin International Poetry Festival Prize in 2008. Okewole’s poems have appeared in ANA Review, Mindfire Review, Farafina Magazine, African Writing, Saraba, and Maple Tree Literary Supplement. He has published two poetry collections: Logarhythms (2005) and The Hate Artist (2015).
• Ifowodo, Ogaga

  Ogaga Ifowodo was born May 14, 1966 in Nigeria. He has written four books of poetry— Homeland and Other Poems, Madiba,The Oil Lamp, and A Good Mourning. He went to the University of Benin for his undergraduate degree in Law. He also received an MFA in Poetry and a PhD in English. He continued on to become a professor at Texas State University for several years. In 1997, he was arrested for criticizing the Sani Abacha regime and released in 1998. His poetry has won several awards, including The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Poetry Prize; The ANA/ Cadbury Award; and The ANA/Gabriel Okpara Poetry Prize.
• Ede, Amatoritsero '"Godwin"'

  Amatoritsero Ede was born in Nigeria in 1963. A teacher and an award-winning poet, Ede is the author of A Writer’s Pains & Caribbean Blues, his first poetry collection, which won the 1998 All Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature. His other collections are Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children (2009) and Teardrops on the Weser (2021). Ede attended Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany (BA and MA), and Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada (PhD), where he was the 2005–2006 Writer-in-Residence. He is the publisher and managing editor of Maple Tree Literary Supplement.
• Wabuke, Hope

  Hope Wabuke was born 1981 in Minnesota. She has published three chapbooks: her (2019), The Leaving (2016), and Movement No.1 (2015). She went to Northwestern University in 2002 for her undergrad in Film and Media Studies and Creative Writing. Wabuke also received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University in 2007. An Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing, her research interests include African and African Diasporic Literature, Literary & Cultural Criticism and Women's and Gender Studies. A finalist for the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, she has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle, Cave Canem, among others. She is the Poetry Editor for Ruminate Magazine and teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• Timol, Umar

  Umar Timol was born in 1970 in Mauritius. Poet, fiction writer and visual artist, he is the author of poetry collections La Parole Testament (2003), Sang (2004), and Vagabondages (2008). His other poetry collection, 52 Fragments pour l’aimée (52 Fragments for the Beloved) was the recipient of the 2016 Poetry Prize at the Moldova Poetry Festival. He received his BA in French Language and Literature from the University College London in 1993. Timol is currently at work on a project called ‘Muslim Faces : Breaking the Stereotypes’ where the writer engages in dialogue with Muslims to capture their stories as a way to resist stereotypes perpetuated in the media and create a platform to showcase the real and complex identities of Muslims.
• Galafa, Beaton

  Beaton Galafa is a Malawian writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. His works have appeared in Fourth & Sycamore, Stuck in the Library, Love Like Salt Anthology, 300K Anthology, Literary Shanghai, Mistake House Magazine, The Blue Tiger Review, Eunoia Review, Transcending the Flame, Every Writer’s Resource, Betrayal, The Seasons, Empowerment, The Elements, BNPA 2017 Anthology, BNPA 2018 Anthology, Better Than Starbucks, The Wagon Magazine, First Writer Magazine, The Bombay Review, Kalahari Review, and elsewhere.
• Nirina, Esther

  Esther Nirina was born in 1932 on the central highlands of Madagascar. From 1953 to 1983, she lived and worked as a librarian at Orléans, France. She is the author of several poetry collections including Lente spirale (Spiral Lens) (1990), Multiple solitude (1997), Rien que lune : Oeuvres poétiques (Nothing but the Moon: Poetic Works) (1998), among others. Her second volume of poetry, Simple voyelle, was awarded the ADELF Grand Prix Littérature de Madagascar. In her writings, she focuses on themes of unity, creation, and after joining the group, "Les Amis de Rochefort," she learned about surrealism, which influenced her style of writing. She returned from France in 1990 and died in 2004 in Antananarivo, Madagascar.
• al-Isha, Faraj Bou

  Faraj Bou al-Isha was born in Libya in 1952. A poet, teacher and journalist, he is the author of three poetry collections. He currently lives in Germany.
• Kinyatti, Maina

  Maina wa Kinyatti was born in 1944 in Kenya. He is most well known for his collections Thunder from the Mountains: Poems and Songs from the Mau Mau and A Season of Blood: Poems from Kenyan Prisons. He went to Farmington University for his undergrad. He also received a masters in History at the University of Michigan. In 1982, he was arrested during the Moi administration for possessing seditious literature and was imprisoned for six years. He subsequently fled to Tanzania before receiving asylum from the United States. He is the recipient of several awards, including PEN Freedom to Write Award.
• Bitek, Otoniya Julianne Okot

  Juliane Okot Bitek was born in 1966 in Kenya. An assistant professor of Black Creativity at Queen’s University in Kingston, Otoniya was awarded the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry for her book titled 100 Days (2016) that explores the monumental tragedy of 1994 Rwandan genocide. Juliane is also the author of books that include Words in Black Cinnamon (1988), Sublime: Lost Words (2018, The Elephants), Gauntlet (2019, Nomados, Vancouver, British Columbia). Her book 100 Days has also been awarded prizes such as the 2017 Alberta Book Awards, 2017 BC Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Canadian Authors Award for Poetry.
• Haile, Reesom

  Reesom Haile was born 1946 in Eritrea. His first poetry collection, Waza ms qumneger ntnsae hager (Tragicomedies for Resurrecting a Nation), was the recipient of the 1998 Raimok Prize, Eritrea’s highest literary award. He was in exile for twenty years during Eritrea’s war for independence from Ethiopia and returned to Eritrea in 1994. His writings examine Africa’s colonial past, civic responsibility and the struggle for national independence. A former Poet Laureate of Eritrea, he is widely recognized for his use of Tigrinya, one of Eritrea's main languages and his championing of the use of African vernaculars in creative expression rather than colonial languages. Haile earned his doctorate in Media Ecology from New York University. He died in 2003.
• Kaldas, Pauline

  Pauline Kaldas was born in 1961 in Egypt. She is most well known for her collection Egyptian Compass which explores the personal and historic events that circulate between Egypt and the United States, and between Arabic and English. She went to Clark University for her undergrad in English and Business. She also received her masters in English at the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University. She continued on to become a professor at the Rhode Island University, American University in Cairo and university of Hollins.