Megan van der Nest

Megan van der Nest was born and raised in Johannesburg and currently lives in Grahamstown, where she is a postgraduate student at Rhodes University, working towards a PhD in English Literature. She holds two Masters Degrees, one in Philosophy and one in Creative Writing. She has worked as a Philosophy lecturer at the University of Fort Hare, and as a facilitator for the annual creative writing course offered by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. She studied music as an undergraduate and was a member of the East Cape Opera Company for two years. She now sings with the Rhodes University Chamber Choir. Her poetry has been published in New Coin, Aerial and ITCH Online, and her poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Rhino (after Wallace Stevens) was included in the 2012 anthology For Rhino in a Shrinking World, edited by Harry Owen. The inspiration for her poetry is drawn from simple moments of family life and from the natural world.