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PROFILES D-G
David Klatzow is an internationally recognised forensic scientist. He is an expert in the field of pyroforensics and an authority on blood alcohol. Before branching out into the world of forensic science, he was a lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Durban-Westville and medical biochemistry at Wits.
Dawn Garish has had five novels and poetry published, a short play and short film produced, and has written for television, magazines and newspapers. Two of her novels have been published in the UK, with a third, Trespass, in press. In 2010 Trespass was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. A non-fiction work and a poetry collection Difficult Gifts will be published by Modjaji this year. She is a practicing medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.
Delphi Carstens is doing a doctorate at UWC in speculative fiction entitled “Uncovering the Apocalypse: Narratives of Collapse and Transformation in the 21st century Fin de Siècle”. The main focus is on apocalyptic trends in science fiction and philosophical ‘theory-fictions’ written during the information era.
Don Pinnock is an associate of the freelance association Southern Write and a former editor of Getaway magazine. He has a PhD in political science, an MA in criminology, a BA in African history and has published a post-doctoral study on gangs, rituals and rites of passage. He has been an electronic engineer, lecturer in journalism and criminology, consultant to the Mandela government, a professional yachtsman, explorer, travel writer, photographer and a cable-car operator on the Rock of Gibraltar, and has travelled extensively, writing and photographing. His present passion is the impact of humans on planetary processes. He was Writer in Residence at South Africa’s Antarctic Sanai 4 base in 2005/6.
Donald Paul, a freelance journalist and editor, likes reading, writing and eating, not necessarily in that order. He was owner/publisher of The San Francisco Review of Books when he lived in California. Since returning to South Africa he has edited a number of magazines including the monthly magazine SACityLife – which became a successful television show on M-Net as Big City, and later with e-tv as CityLife – The Property Magazine and The Big Issue, which he left in 2009. He worked with Media24 to launch Drum into East Africa and was the editorial and design consultant on PS—Play Safe, a Medical Research Council magazine aimed at urban black African men. He is a member of the Slow Food organisation.
Doreen Baingana is the Ugandan author of Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, which won the AWP Short Fiction Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, 2006. She has a law degree from Makerere University and an MFA from the University of Maryland and was a Writer-in-Residence there and a Bread Loaf Writers Conference Fellow. She worked for ten years at VOA and has published stories and led creative writing workshops in the US, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. She recently resigned as managing editor of Storymoja, a Kenyan publishing house that organises the Storymoja Hay Festival, to return to Uganda and write fulltime. (pic on tropicalfishetc.blogspot.com )
Douglas Rogers is an award-winning author, journalist and travel writer. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, Travel & Leisure magazine and Condé Nast Traveler. Born and raised in Zimbabwe and educated at Prince Edward School and Rhodes, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His first book The Last Resort, a lively account of his parents’ struggle for survival in Zimbabwe,has been a bestseller and is soon to be made into a film by the BBC. A stage adaptation is set to open in Cape Town in December.
Edyth Bulbring is a seasoned journalist, former political correspondent and news editor for the Sunday Times, and the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Club. She has also published four young adult novels – The Summer of Toffie and Grummer, Cornelia Button and the Globe of Gamagion, Pops and the Nearly Dead and Melly, Mrs Ho and Me.
Zimbabwean-born writer and human rights activist Elinor Sisulu is the author of the award winning children's book The Day Gogo Went to Vote and the Noma Award-winning biography Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime. From 2004 to 2009 Elinor was the main South African spokesperson for Zimbabwe human rights organisations. She has been instrumental in establishing puku.co.za, a Southern African children’s literature website.
Elizabeth van Heyningen is a social historian who taught at UCT for many hears. Together with Vivian Bickford-Smith and Nigel Worden, she is the author of a two-volume history of Cape Town. She has also written on the Cape medical profession in the nineteenth century and on the impact of public health reforms on Cape society. Currently she is working on the concentration camps of the South African War.
Etienne van Heerden’s debut youth novel, Matoli, was published in 1978. During the 1980s he was member of a group of Afrikaans writers secretly meeting exiled ANC members at the now-famous Victoria Falls Writers’ Conference in Zimbabwe. He went on to establish himself as one of South Africa’s pre-eminent writers with novels such as Toorberg (1986), Die stoetmeester (1993), Die swye van Mario Salviati (2000), In stede van die liefde (2005) and 30 nagte in Amsterdam (2008). His work has been translated and sold all over the world. Of his generation of writers, Van Heerden has won the most literary awards in South Africa. Etienne is the founding editor of the cultural website LitNet and now works as a professor at UCT, where he lectures on literature, literary theory and creative writing.
Finuala Dowling’s first volume of poetry, I Flying, was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize, her second collection, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe, wasjoint winner of the SANLAM award and her third Notes From the Dementia Ward won the 2010 Olive Schreiner Prize for Poetry. She is the author of three novels – What Poets Need, Flyleaf and Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart – and her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in several anthologies. She has also written comic skits and plays, winning the Spier/PANSA Audience Award. Finuala has an MA from UCT and a D Litt from UNISA. She teaches poetry, writes textbooks for a living and lives in Kalk Bay.
Fiona Snyckers was educated at Rhodes and Wits. She is the author of Trinity Rising and Trinity On Air (Jonathan Ball Publishers), Two of Hearts (forthcoming from Nollybooks), and the Sisterz series of mobile novels published by the Shuttleworth Foundation's M4Lit project. She has also published various short stories, most recently in the Home Away collection edited by Louis Greenberg. She lives in Johannesburg with her husband and children.
Francis Wilson, an emeritus professor, has been teaching at UCT for 40 years. He has written widely on the South African political economy including gold mining, farming, the migrant labour system, globalisation and poverty. He founded the Southern African Labour & Development Research Unit and directed the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development. He was chairperson of the Council of the University of Fort Hare and chaired the first National Water Advisory Council established under President Mandela. His current research interests are focused on rethinking agriculture, on inequality and on generating full employment.
Gus Ferguson writes poems, mainly to amuse. He is 70, has won a few awards and has published numerous poets. He lives in Plumstead with his sternest critic Nicky and her poodle, Proust. His interests include jazz and cycling.
