We are proud to announce the upcoming publication in 2018 of collections by Megan Ross, Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, P.R. Anderson and Siphokazi Jonas.
In 2017, uHlanga’s South African chorus swelled. Celebrated poets Francine Simon, Douglas Reid Skinner and Koleka Putuma all published single-author collections to national and international acclaim, while our anthologies Cutting Carrots the Wrong Way and Imbewu Yesini amplified the voices of young local poets to the country at large.
We hope to continue sharing the work of daring, experimental South African writers with you, and thus we are thrilled to announce the poets who will be publishing with us in the coming year.
Our 2018 lineup, in order of publication:
Megan Ross is a writer, poet and journalist from the Eastern Cape. She is winner of the 2016 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, the 2017 Brittle Paper Award for Fiction and was second runner-up for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize. She has been shortlisted for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship and longlisted for the Writivism Prize. Her forthcoming book with uHlanga, Milk Fever, will be her debut collection of poetry.
Saaleha Idrees Bamjee is a photographer and writer based in Johannesburg. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is the winner of the 2014 Writivism Short Story Prize. Her poetry has appeared in New Contrast, New Coin, Ons Klyntji, Aerodrome and the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry anthologies, among others, as well as the special South African issue of Illuminations. She was the Writivism Emerging African Writers resident at Stellenbosch University in October 2016.
P.R. Anderson is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Litany Bird and Foundling’s Island. He lectures in English at the University of Cape Town, with a wide range of interests, from Romanticism in the colonial encounter to the culture of the Allied campaign in Italy in 1944-5. His as-yet-untitled collection of poetry released by uHlanga has already been described by JM Coetzee as a book “destined to be a landmark in South African poetry.”
Siphokazi Jonas is a writer, performer and poet, who has written, produced, and performed in three one-woman poetry productions: Poetry Under the Stars, Wrestling with Dawn, and Conspiracy Theory. A champion slam poet and runner-up for the 2016 Sol Plaatje Poetry Award, she currently works at the University of Cape Town, teaching the history of isiXhosa praise poetry, among other things. Her work engages with questions of faith, identity, gender-based violence, cultural and linguistic alienation, black women in rural spaces, and the politics of the everyday.
We are incredibly proud to have these poets joining us, and we’re eager to bring their work to you over the course of what promises to be a great year for South African poetry. More news, including release dates and advance information about each poet’s collection, will be forthcoming in the new year.