Tag Archives: Captivation

Nadine Aisha

Zimbabwe No Comments

Nadine Aisha is the author of Still, a debut poetry pamphlet exploring women’s stories and women’s survival.

She is active in the movement to end gender-based violence, and works creatively with young people to educate and empower. She has blogged for a number of Scottish organisations about feminism and violence against women, and has worked with young people to create theatre exploring sexual violence. She has been published by the Dangerous Women Project, performed solo shows at both the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the social justice Just Festival, and is currently the writer in residence for YWCA Scotland’s #FeministFest 2016.

Born in the UK, Nadine Aisha is of mixed heritage and had a Zimbabwean-meets-Indian-meets-Yorkshire upbringing. Her favourite quote is from Angela Davis: ‘walls turned sideways are bridges’.

Justine Kakoko

Tanzania No Comments

Justine Kakoko, known to many as Brother GSP, is a passionate poet and Pan-Africanist living in Southern part of Tanzania. This 23 year old is a student at the University of Dodoma pursuing Bachelor of Arts and Public Administration.

He was inspired to start writing poetry by likes of Amiri Baraka, Last Poets, Mutabaruka, Alicia Walker, Saul Williams, his Comrade George Kyomushula and other many more.

Although, he does not get many opportunities to perform his work due to the lack of poetry events in his town he is determined to continue writing.

Siyabonga Ngcai

South Africa No Comments

Siyabonga Ngcai, better known as Gqobhoz’imbawula, is an ambitious poet, story teller, song writer, performing artist and Architectural Technologist by profession, born and raised in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. He grew up as a fine artist, Traditional and Pantsula dancer, and later found himself attached to writing short stories and poems.

Gqobhoz’imbawula writes his poetry in his mother tongue, isiXhosa, addressing matters concerning physical and emotional abuse against woman and children, African history, traditional and cultural backgrounds, and other pertinent stories involving the people in our communities. He has shared his craft in countless events, poetry festivals and musical sessions along with national and international artists.

Gqobhoz’imbawula represented the Eastern Cape in a Word’N’Sound Poetry and Live Music Series slam competition called Slam for Your Life in Grahamstown in 2014. He has also contributed his song entitled Ingoma from his album Ukholo lwemveli to the Current State of Poetry, SADC Love Poetry Mixtape which features amazing poets from different regions across the African continent. The mixtape was released on the 14th of February 2015 online for downloads on Bozza.mobi.

Lebohang Nova Masango

South Africa No Comments

Lebohang ‘Nova’ Masango is a writer, poet, activist, feminist and speaker – living her best life, in love and service to girls and women. She writes for Essays of Africa magazine and the acclaimed website for teen girls, Rookie Mag. She is currently featured on musician, Reason’s song “Endurance” alongside Hip Hop Pantsula. She is the ambassador of the ‘Zazi’ campaign, the official sexual health programme for girls and young women across all higher education institutions in South Africa. She has also collaborated with Zonke Dikana on the ‘Zazi’ theme song. She was the youth representative at the UNAIDS’ November 2014 meetings in Geneva, Switzerland to address sexual health programming concerns with global stakeholders. Nova has been invited as a speaker at the 7th Annual South African AIDS Conference in Durban. She has been published in the July/ August 2015 edition of the renowned Poetry Foundation’s publication, Poetry Magazine.

Nova is regularly called upon to provide social commentary on varying topics including Feminism, identity politics and youth culture. She has been featured on Kaya FM, Radio 702, Y FM, Power FM and on television shows such as SABC 1’s Shift, eNCA’s live debate with Trudi Makhaya and performed on the country’s most popular music programme, Live Amp. She was a panellist on Global Shapers Johannesburg’s #AreOurGirlsback? panel with Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Steve Letsike and Live Mag’s #VIPDebateclub with Panashe Chigumadzi. She has been published in Mike Alfred’s “Twelve Plus One” – an anthology containing the works and interviews of several South African poets and in 2014, she wrote the Nelson Mandela tribute that was performed at the Metro FM Music Awards. Nova is currently a member of recently founded organisation of South African feminists, the Feminist Stokvel and is studying towards her Honours degree in Social Anthropology.

Twitter: @NovaHerself
Instagram: NovaHerself
Tumblr: www.novaherself.tumblr.com

Kela Griot

South Africa No Comments

“Kela Griot is a creative, radio head, writer, poet and lover of humanity. She has been writing for more than 15 years but it wasn’t until four years ago that she was drawn out of her shell to set foot on a stage.

She has been on numerous platforms since: the Basadi Jam With A Purpose, Writers Lounge, Kagiso Arts Expo, Art by Night, The Bangkok Sundays, Snapshots, Restorative Justice Women’s Fair, Show Face, Poetic Joint and Fanatic Poetry Sessions to name a few. She has gone on to be one of the founding members of the New Age Poetry Movement, as well as co-founder and host of the Juiced Poetry Sessions.

She describes herself as deep empath and suspects that’s why she is a medium for poetry and other stuff. She hopes to help humanity art itself back to love, one poem and outlandish creative disruption at a time.”

Twitter: @KelaGriot

Arja Salafranca

South Africa No Comments

Arja Salafranca has published two collections of poetry, A Life Stripped of Illusions and The Fire in which we Burn; a third, Beyond Touch is published by Modjaji Books in 2015 and a collection of short stories: The Thin Line. She has participated in writers conferences, edited two anthologies and has received awards for her writing. More at: http://arjasalafranca.blogspot.com

Katleho Shoro

South Africa No Comments

Katleho Kano Shoro is a performance poet, writer, social science graduate (MA) and steadfast enthusiast of Africa-centred literary initiatives.

This Johannesburg-born poet has been writing and performing poetry since the mid-2000s. She has taken to infusing her poetic proclivities within her scholarly pursuits: namely, through her Honours dissertation which explored contemporary performance poetry in South Africa (2010), and as the co-editor of The Spoken Word Project: Stories Travelling Through Africa – a publication edited together with Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Christopher Ouma and anchored within a Goethe Institute project. While she has participated in African literary initiatives in various ways, her work with the African Arts Institute (AFAI) and Langaa RPCIG is worth mentioning. As a former project manager at AFAI, she coordinated African literary discussions in Cape Town and hosted African writers as part of the Franschhoek Literary Festival. Katleho’s work with the Cameroon-based research and publishing initiative, Langaa RPCIG, has included coordinating and facilitating literature workshops in Cape Town and Cameroon.

Katleho has performed her poetry in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Grahamstown and Swaziland in spaces such as Yfm, Verses and HOLAAfrica events. Between 2008 and 2009, she was a finalist and core poet in Poetry Delight Cape Town and Poetry Delight Johannesburg, respectively. Through the collective, she also produced Poetry Delight Grahamstown: Chemistry of the Arts – a theatrical poetry production which formed part of the National Arts Festival Fringe programme (2009). Katleho was a featured poet in Nike’s CAPE/BURG (IAM1) Project in 2009 where she wrote and recorded the poem, “Remember Me”, for the project and CAPE/BURG (IAM1) book.

Her poem, Sesotho saka will not be written italics, was recently published in the journal, Killens Review of Arts and Letters (2015). She is currently editing her first collection of poetry, Serurubele Poetries.

Tshepo Blackhole

South Africa No Comments

The name, Tshepo Molefe. Also known as Blackhole on stage. This pseudo name is a reflection of who and what I am, from my short nature (which I inherited from my mother) to the anger that I bring on stage and the hatred I am still trying to extinguish with my pen.

I write to change perceptions and hopefully to inspire change in a person’s life and view on things such as love, what poetry is and the misconception of man being invulnerable. I feel like as poets, it’s our duty to not only just write to be dope or to compete, but we need to touch life with our craft and build a better society through our wordsmith. That is what my art aims to do, and one day will.

Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile

South Africa No Comments

Professor Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile, considered one of South Africa’s most distinctive poetic voices since the l960s, is South Africa’s National Poet Laureate. Gwendolyn Brooks, the late poet laureate of Illinois, said of Kgositsile’s work almost forty years ago:

I would say that he is a ‘master’, if it were not for my belief that no one ‘masters’ anything, that each finds or makes his candle, then tries to see by the guttering light. Willie has made a good candle. And Willie has good eyes.

Kgositsile left South Africa in 1961 as one of the first young cadres of the African National Congress (ANC) instructed to do so by the leadership of the national liberation movement. While doing his MFA at Columbia University in 1969 he started teaching literature and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He has also taught at a number of other universities and colleges in the USA, including: Queens College, Bennett College, State University of New York at Stonybrook, University of Denver, Wayne State University, New School for Social Research, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1975 he returned to Africa and taught at a number of universities, including: the universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Fort Hare.

Professor Kgositsile has worked in various departments and structures of the ANC, both above and underground. He was one of the founding members of the ANC’s Education Department (1977), and the Department of Arts and Culture (1982). He was also a founding member of the ANC Veterans League in 2009 and was a member of the ANC National Centenary Task Team.

He was Special Adviser to former Ministers of Arts and Culture, Mr. Z. Pallo Jordan and Mr. Paul Mashatile.

Kgositsile is one of the most widely published South African poets. His work has been translated into many languages. He has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, among them: the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize; the Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award; the Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Poetry Award; the Herman Charles Bosman Prize. In 2008 he was awarded the National Order of Ikhamanga: Silver (OIS).

BOOKS PUBLISHED:
THIS WAY I SALUTE YOU – Kwela Books & Snailpress, Cape Town, 2004

IF I COULD SING – Kwela Books & Snailpress, Cape Town, 2002

TO THE BITTER END – Third World Press, Chicago, 1995

APPROACHES TO POETRY WRITING – Third World Press, Chicago, 1994

THE PRESENT IS A DANGEROUS PLACE TO LIVE – Third World Press, Chicago, 1993

WHEN THE CLOUDS CLEAR – COSAW Publications, Johannesburg, 1990

FREEWORD (with Katiyo, Davis, & Rydstrom,eds.) – Writers’ Bookmachine, Stockholm, 1983

HEARTPRINTS – Schwifstinger Galerie-Verlag, 1980

PLACES AND BLOODSTAINS – Achebe Publications, San Francisco, 1976

A CAPSULE COURSE IN BLACK POETRY WRITING (with G. Brooks,
H. Madhubuti, D. Randall, eds.) – Broadside Press, Detroit, 1975

THE WORD IS HERE (ed.) – Doubleday, New York, 1973

MY NAME IS AFRIKA – Doubleday, New York, 1971

FOR MELBA – Third World Press, Chicago, 1970

SPIRITS UNCHAINED – Broadside Press, Detroit, 1969

Gary Cummiskey

South Africa No Comments

Gary Cummiskey is a South African poet and publisher living in Johannesburg. He is the editor of Dye Hard Press, which he started in 1994.

He is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including Romancing the Dead (Tearoom Books, Durban 2009), Sky Dreaming (Graffiti Kolkata, India 2011) and I Remain Indoors (Tearoom Books, Stockholm 2013). In 2009, he published Who was Sinclair Beiles?, a collection of writings about the South African Beat poet, co-edited with Eva Kowalska. An expanded and revised edition of the book was published in 2014.

Also in 2009, Cummiskey compiled Beauty Comes Grovelling Forward, a selection of South African poetry and prose published on the US literary website Big Bridge.

His debut collection of short fiction, Off-ramp, was published in 2013 and was short-listed for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2014.

His work has been translated into French, Greek and Bangla.

He is currently editor of the South African literary journal New Coin.

Thandokuhle S. Mngqibisa

South Africa No Comments

Dr. Thandokuhle S. Mngqibisa is a performing poet, medical doctor and an activist for womyn’s issues born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1984. She studied medicine, completing her MBBCh early in 2011. The time & emotional commitment required for this, however, would never see her second-guessing her place in the performance poetry zeitgeist. The major themes of her written work centre around the issues of womyn in the setting of modern South Africa. She works intimately with womyn on a daily basis as a medical officer in obstetrics and gynaecology.

She discovered stage poetry in 2005 when she met and joined a 7 member poetry collective and inspiration, T.O…T! Together they introduced poetry to different audiences and challenged the status quo by performing fluid collaborative pieces that matched different styles of poetry and used the physical movement of 7 poets to tell a single story.

She has performed poetry for international movement to stop violence against womyn, One Billion Rising (2013, 2014). She was part of the cast of a workshopped theatrical poetry performance called Secret With the Moon; part of the Arts Alive festival (2013) and was invited to perform at the Melville poetry festival (2012).

She has judged various poetry slams like Word n Sound (2014), Drama For Life, Lover and Another (2013) and has helped in preparing prolific, talented poets for the stage for Drama for Life (2014) by conducting workshops to observe and guide their performance technique and discuss and impart knowledge on the subject matter–sex and sexuality.

She has a collection of published poems called One Big Word and has been published in an online magazine and in the Saturday Star lifestyle segment (2008?). She has performed her poems on various radio stations (VOW, ukhozi) and TV shows (etv sunrise, shiz niz, creations).

She has opened for Simphiwe Dana and shared stages with various successful artists like Lebo Mashile, Tu Nokwe, Myesha Jenkins, award-winning poets Phillippa Yaa de Villiers and Vus’muzi ‘Romeo the Poet’ Phakathi. She planned and hosted a poetry and discussion seminar called SPEAK for 16 days of activism.

She is a few months from completing her second collection of poems.

Livhuwani Mashao

South Africa No Comments

Livhuwani Mashao was born Livhuwani Takalani Mashao on March 8, 1993, in Vosloorus, Gauteng. As a young boy he was exposed to Edgar Allen’s anthology and he grew up with a great passion for poetry and music. At the age of 15 he was introduced to Nasir Oludara Jones’, Nas, music and he fell in love with his writing style, fashion sense and demeanor.

Livhuwani began to write poems and raps, performing at school and church as he was being inspired by the divine life of Jesus Christ. Still growing and studying theology, Livhuwani hopes to reach out to his peers in style using witty rhyme schemes and word play. Livhuwani is currently taking theatre classes at Johannesburg theatre with the well known Souht African film director, Mr. Duma Ndlovu, being his lecturer. “Stage presence is a good trait to an all-round performer” Livhuwani alludes in most of his interviews.

Peter Esterhuysen

South Africa No Comments

Peter Esterhuysen was born in 1963 and died in 2004. As a founding member of the StoryTeller Group, he scripted highly successful educational comics on environmental health, HIV/Aids treatment and gender relations in rural settings. He storyboarded short stories by three South African writers, Can Themba, Bessie Head and Alex la Guma. He scripted theatrical productions for the Handspring Puppet Company and anchored the writing team that produced the TV series Soul City, Gazlam and Yizo Yizo I and II. The latter won multiple local and international awards. In 2002 he co-wrote a feature film with Tebogo Mahlatsi titled Scar. The script was selected for the Sundance Writers Festival held in Utah, but he was too ill to attend. His short stories and poetry reviews were published in local literary journals. Five years after his death, a selection of his poems was published in Comeback: Poems in Conversation 1984-1989.

Mbasa Sigcau

South Africa No Comments

Mbasa Sigcau, also known as Amazing the Slum Intellect, is a 20 year old emcee, poet and observer based in Grahamstown South Africa. He honed his writing style by studying the Durban underground rap scene. Most of his writing is deeply rooted in social commentary.

Thandi Sliepen

South Africa No Comments

Thandi Sliepen is a self taught artist living in the Eastern Free State. Born in 1971 in Mowbray, Cape Town she left South Africa in 1976 and immigrated with her family to New Zealand where she completed her formal education.

In 1990 she farewelled the antipodes and returned to Africa, first to Tanzania for 8 months and then back to her roots in South Africa. In 1992 Thandi met artist Martin Wessels and the stage was set for a life of Art. She moved into a cave on Martin’s property and started painting, sculpting and continued to write poetry prolifically.

Since then Thandi has lived and exhibited in various places around South Africa, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Thandi currently lives on a farm outside Ladybrand with her partner, photographer Glen Green and their two children.

Thandi’s website is www.glengreen.co.za/thandi

Fadzai Nova Dube

Zimbabwe No Comments

Fadzai Nova Dube is a writer and philosopher. She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and is of Shona origin. She relocated to East London, South Africa at the age of 5. In 2007, Fadzai moved to Cape Town to complete a B.A in film and Media at the University of Cape Town.

She currently lives in Pretoria, South Africa with her two German Shepherds and is currently working on her first fiction novel.

Robert Berold

South Africa No Comments

Robert Berold has published four collections of poetry and four books of non-fiction. As editor of New Coin from 1989 to 1999, he sought out and published much of the groundbreaking new poetry being written in that period, later editing a selection of these into the anthology It All Begins. He has edited over 40 books by South African poets, several of them published under his Deep South imprint. For most of his working life he has been a rural development worker and a freelance editor of technical books. Currently he coordinates the MA programme in creative writing at Rhodes University.

Stephen Symons

South Africa No Comments

Stephen Symons is a former lecturer, graphic designer and poet. His poetry has been published in journals (including: New Contrast, Carapace, New Coin, Prufrock, Aerodrome, Umlanga ) and various anthologies. He holds a Masters in Creative Writing from UCT and is currently busy with a PhD in African Studies. He lives in Oranjezicht with his wife and two children.

Marike Beyers

South Africa No Comments

Marike Beyers lives in Grahamstown, where she spends most of her time surrounded by books, papers, the buzz of internet pages. Balance is a difficult thing, as is the wind. She gets herself tangled up in letters and does not drive. On the other hand, she says, “Thunderstorms are magnificent beings. And then there is poetry that reaches into stillness.” Her collection of poems, On Another Page, was published with Aerial Publishing in 2011.

Thabiso Malepe

South Africa No Comments

Thabiso Malepe is the co founder of Slum Literature,an audio visual poetry experience that fuses Slam Poetry with Hip Hop. It is rooted in social consciousness and seeks to tell the stories and illustrate the brilliance of where it originated, the township.

Stuart Thembisile Lewis

South Africa No Comments

Stuart Thembisile Lewis is a journalist and filmmaker who moonlights as a poet. He was born in 1993, less than a year before South Africa’s first democratic election, and carries a massive chip on his shoulder for consistently being lumped together with the so-called ‘Born Frees’. He spends most of his time stuffing around on the internet

Jeannie Wallace McKeown

South Africa No Comments

Jeannie Wallace McKeown writes poetry and prose creatively; works at a desk in a university but has also been a freelance writer for the past six years covering academic lectures, seminars, book launches and interviewing interesting people; has had creative pieces published in literary journals and online; mother of two boys who can no longer be described as small; in a steady co-parenting relationship with an ex-husband, resolutely single and using poetry as one means of meeting this life head-on.

Deborah Seddon

South Africa No Comments

Deborah Seddon is an academic and a poet who was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, but is now based in Grahamstown, South Africa, where she teaches South African, African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and English Renaissance literature in the Rhodes University English Department. Her academic research is focused on South African orature and the transnational aesthetics of spoken word poetry. She is a founding member of the Cycle of Knowledge, a poetry organization consisting of students, school learners, and poets from the local community. The Cycle of Knowledge was created in 2013, and is a community engagement partnership between the Rhodes University English Department and the Writers’ Movement: a group of poets located in Joza, Grahamstown. The weekly sessions of the Cycle of Knowledge alternate between meetings on campus and in Joza, and provide a range of educational activities around writing, reading, and performing poetry. These include discussions of the work of South African and international poets, creative writing exercises, poetry ciphers and open mike sessions, editing and group feedback sessions on individual works, performances on campus, in town, and at local schools, recording poetry in video formats, collating biographies of the poets involved, and documenting the group’s activities.

Since 2006, Deborah has been a member of Aerial Publishing, a self-financing community publishing project based in Grahamstown, which received its start-up funding from the Centre for the Book in Cape Town. The committee annually calls for manuscripts of poetry and prose, mainly from Grahamstown writers, and chooses two per year to publish. Aerial Publishing edits, designs, and prints all their publications themselves, using funds raised by the sales of their books.

Deborah has published academic papers on South African literature and orature, African-American literature, South African engagements with Shakespeare, and on pedagogy in post-apartheid South Africa. Some of her poems appear in Writing From Here and Aerial.

Rosamund Stanford

South Africa No Comments

Rosamund Stanford grew up on a farm in East Griqualand, South Africa, and studied literature, history and politics at Cape Town University. She has worked as a script writer and an editor in education and IT publishing, and is now a contract writer and editor. She has written non-fiction books about HIV and short fiction. Her poetry has appeared in New Coin, in the anthology In the Heat of Shadows – South African poetry 1996-2013, and has been translated into French. Her collections of poems are The Peeling of Skies (Aerial Publishing 2004) and The Hurricurrent (Deep South 2011).

Lesedi Thwala

South Africa No Comments

Lesedi Thwala is a 20-year-old female, born in Itsoseng but grew up in a small town called Lichtenburg in the North West Province. She is currently doing her first year of her Bachelor of Arts at Rhodes University. A die-hard feminist, Motswako rapper and recovering book worm, Lesedi’s love for poetry began as an escape from the challenges she faced in life until a friend discovered one of her poems and forced her to recite it for a group of people. Lesedi is passionate about South African literature and dreams of becoming an author someday.

Sisonkepapu

South Africa No Comments

Sisonkepapu is a dynamic personality. Close observers of his work claim that he has a provocative poetic skill and has established himself as a prominent poetic voice within the Eastern Cape. Being a professor of literature, his focus extends beyond the academy and community, and has a penchant for critical engagement through writing and development of budding writers like himself. His poem was added into the syllabus for a Poetry course at NMMU in 2014 and 2015, and offered his insights into the critical revelation in the piece, and the art of poetic writing and literary interpretation in the Poetry lectures. The Resonance Poetry Movement, a poetry society he co-founded, facilitates creative writing workshops and has published an anthology, hosted local and International acts such as Ian Kamau and Luka Lesson.

Crystal Warren

South Africa No Comments

Crystal Warren grew up in Port Elizabeth but now lives in Grahamstown where she works at the National English Literary Museum. She has edited New Coin poetry magazine and taught a creative writing course. In-between she manages to occasionally do some writing of her own.

Mishka Hoosen

South Africa No Comments

Mishka Hoosen was born in Johannesburg and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. She is currently completing an MA in Anthropology, with particular focus on gender, sexuality, violence, and embodiment theory. She has a love of Cohiba cigars, airplane rides, Ancient Greek, and soda floats. Her book of nonfiction, Hollow the Bones, is forthcoming from Deep South Books in August 2015.

TJ Dema

Botswana No Comments

TJ Dema is a Botswana based poet who runs SAUTI, an events, arts and performance management organization. She was the Chairperson of The Writers Association of Botswana from 2010 to 2012 and a founding member (alumni) of Botswana’s acclaimed Exoduslivepoetry! collective, who coordinated Botswana’s sole annual poetry festival between 2004 and 2009.

A 2005/06 participant in the British Council’s Crossing Borders project, she has since participated in a number of their initiatives including the 2007/08 Power in the Voice(PIV) initiative as mentor to the PIV national champions.

In 2010 she was guest writer for the University of Warwick’s International Gateway for Gifted Youth program. In 2008 she was in India for the Delhi International Festival of the Arts, and in 2010 she was a main stage act at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA), Shakespeare and co’s Festivalandco in France as well as the World Wide Words festival in Denmark. In 2011 she was part of the Poetry Africa tour, a 5 city Southern African initiative of the University of Kwazulu Natal’s Center for Creative Arts. She is part of a bi-continental, multi country eclectic ensemble called Sonic Slam Chorus who debuted their poetry infused soundscapes at HIFA 2011 and returned in 2012. Recently she participated in a series of events linked to the London Cultural Olympiad.

Between August and November 2012 I was based out of Iowa City as one of the International Writing Program writers-in-residence.

Donna Ogunnaike

Nigeria No Comments

Poet, writer and Energy Law expert, Donna is arguably the most compelling voice in Nigeria’s intense performance poetry circuit today. She has been described in the only ranking effort for spoken word in Nigeria (EGC Platform) as the “queen of spoken word poetry in Nigeria” for the year 2013 and ranked amongst the top 20 poets in Nigeria in the year 2012.

She is a Partner in the Law Firm of Adepetun, Caxton-Martins, Agbor & Segun where she has earned herself the prized ranking of “Rising Star” in 2014 and 2015 from IFLR 1000 for the World’s Leading Lawyers. When she is not providing expert advice to clients, Donna invests her energies in performed poetry and was formerly a co-coordinator of the well established Nigerian platform for art expression, Freedom Hall. She is a regular act on platforms like Taruwa, Freedom Hall and Word Up (where she has been a judge of poetry slams severally and was a facilitator at their event “The Business of Spoken Word in Nigeria, 2014” where she taught a sizeable audience of spoken word artistes on perfecting their act “From Page to Stage”).

Donna has been called upon for landmark events where only the finest acts are selected such as Nigeria’s 1st Cultural Trade Show (2014) tagged “Business Meets Culture” hosted by the Nigerian-German Business Association, the Lagos Black Heritage Festival and the WS 80 (celebrating Professor Wole Soyinka). DONNA was also the only Nigerian and one of 11 women elected by ONE.ORG for the National Month of Poetry, 2014 on its “National Poetry Month: Uplifting Verses From 11 Strong Female Poets”, alongside greats like Maya Angelou and Naomi Shihab Nye.

Her debut audio album “Water For Roses” is now available for purchase, with a formal launch to follow by April, 2015

Katlego K Kol-Kes

Botswana No Comments

Katlego K Kol-Kes is a 2015 Centre for African Cultural Excellence Writivist, Trans* ARTivist, writer, musician, educator and theatre producer. She is founder of the Queer Shorts Showcase Festival, “Queer Me Out” blog, and a 2013/14 Best of Botswana “Performing Arts” Artist honouree. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community.

Kol-Kes is a WITS University BA Dramatic Arts Honours graduate. Her writing appears in the Kalahari Review, Peolwane Magazine, The Washington Blade, Afropunk.com and EliteDaily.com.

kkolkes.wix.com/kkolkes