The Empty Chair by PEN SA

Baeletsi Tsatsi interviews Sheila Arnold and Philippa Namutebi Kabali-Kagwa about the art of storytelling. They propose definitions of storytelling, reflect on its value, their lineages, how to teach storytelling, the importance of creating community and intergenerational conversation. They also share stories. Baeletsi Tsatsi is a storyteller, writer and story coach. Sheila Arnold is a teachi...

Efemia Chela asks Mark Gevisser and Sarah Schulman about their books The Pink Line and Let the Record Show , respectively. They share lessons from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), debate visibility politics, the idea of a queer utopia, the relationship between legal reform and social change as well as how to avoid burnout. Efemia Chela is a Zambian-Ghanaian editor living in Johannesbu...

Dylan Valley interviews Kitso Lynn Lelliott and Bayeté Ross Smith about their artistic practice and projects. Kitso reflects on her PhD, "South Atlantic Hauntings: Geographies of Memory, Ancestralities and Re-Memberings”, and Bayeté discusses “Red Summers VR”, his 360 immersive media project about racially motivated domestic terrorism in the U.S. from 1917 to 1921. It’s an expansive conversat...

PEN SA board member Bongani Kona interviews Claire Schwartz and Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon. They address issues of state violence, complicity, the role of the law, migration, the influence of Black studies and the possibilities of poetry, relations of care and imagining new ways of living alongside one another. Bongani Kona is a writer, editor and lecturer in the Department of History at the Universi...

In this special episode, PEN SA president Nadia Davids invites Justice Albie Sachs to reflect on his first book, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1966) – a testament to his resistance and resilience during the harsh deprivations of imprisonment. Albie shares his experience of spending 168 days in solitary confinement, his struggle to convey the boredom and depression of detention as well as how he f...

Nikiwe Solomon and Lucas Bessire share their experiences of researching and writing about rivers in Cape Town and aquifers in Kansas. They contemplate the language of denialism, depletion and toxicity, anthropology as activism, redefining value, and responding to the planetary crisis. Nikiwe Solomon is an early career researcher and lecturer in the Environmental Humanities South programme, working...

Julie Otsuka talks to Bongani Kona about her three novels: When the Emperor was Divine , The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers . Their capacious conversation engages with painting, memory, community, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War 2, book bans, writing in the first person plural and more. Bongani Kona is a PEN SA board member. He is a writer, editor and lecturer in the...

Wamuwi Mbao asks Julian Lucas about the role of the critic, the value of criticism, working outside the academy, his writing process and what he’s reading next. Wamuwi Mbao is a literary critic with the Johannesburg Review of Books. He is editor of the collection Years of Fire and Ash: Poetry of Decolonization (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021) and lectures in English literary studies...

Zethu Matebeni chairs a conversation with Venita Blackburn, Thenjiwe Mswane and Lindiwe Nkutha. Our guests contemplate the depictions of girlhood, family life, bodies without compromise, and intimacy in their work. They also read short extracts from their books. Listen to the Bonus Episode to hear the extended readings. Professor zethu Matebeni is an activist in the academy. She is the SARChI&nbsp...

In this bonus episode, Venita reads "Smoothies" from How to Wrestle a Girl ; Lindiwe reads the opening section titled ‘Anna’ from the story “Jocasta's Hairballs” in 69 Jerusalem Stree t and Thenjiwe reads Chapter 21 “Nonhle” from All Gomorrahs Are The Same . You can listen to shorter versions of their readings as well as their scintillating conversation with zethu Matebeni in episode one...

In our final episode of season four, Edward Webster chairs a conversation with Akira Drake Rodriguez and Trevor Ngwane about their books. Edward Webster is the Distinguished Research Professor at the Southern Centre of Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.  Akira Drake Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design....

In our sixth episode of season four, Sindi-Leigh McBride interviews Sean Jacobs and Ben Williams. Sindi-Leigh is a writer from Johannesburg, and a PhD candidate at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Sean is an Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City and founding editor of Africa Is a Country. He was born and grew up...

In our fifth episode of season four, Barbara Boswell interviews Natalie Diaz and vangile gantsho about their poetry. Barbara Boswell is an author, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town. Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection is When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper...

In our fourth episode of season four, Hlonipha Mokoena chairs a conversation with Rebecca Hall and Richard Conyngham about their graphic novels. Hlonipha Mokoena is an associate professor and researcher at WiSER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Rebecca Hall is an historian, activist, lawyer, educator, and the author of Wake: Th...

In our third episode of season four, Sikhumbuzo Mngadi and Aretha Phiri assess the South African legacy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, 70 years after it was first published. Our chair, Sikhumbuzo Mngadi is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Johannesburg. Our guest, Aretha Phiri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literary Studies in English at Rh...

In our second episode of season four, Dr Shingi Mtero chairs a panel of expert political analysts:  Prof Suzy Graham, Prof Gilbert Khadiagala and Prof John Stremlau. They discuss South Africa’s and America’s foreign policy in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, address charges of hypocrisy, evaluate South Africa’s voting record at the United Nations and the efficacy of the current UN sy...

In our first episode of season four, Nadia Davids, the President of PEN South Africa, interviews Ciraj Rassool, Senior Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape. Together, they explore the history of District Six, forced removals, restitution, artistic representation, memorialisation, and consider the connection between the District Six Museum and the Tenement Museum in New York C...

In our seventh episode, Cape Town-based writer, editor and lecturer Masande Ntshanga interviews Renee Gladman, an American writer and artist. Masande asks Renee about her Ravicka novels (Dorothy, a publishing project), Samuel R. Delany, experimental poets, drawing and writing cities, her forthcoming book about Black futurity, Plans for Sentences (Wave Books), and what it means to be a Black person...

Our sixth episode is devoted to community radio in South Africa and the USA. Jacob Ntshangase, head of Wits Radio Academy at Wits University, Johannesburg, chairs the conversation. He is joined by guests from Atlanta, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Dázon Dixon Diallo is producer and host of “Sisters’ Time/WomxnSpeak” on WRFG. Brenda Leonard is Bush Radio’s Managing Director and Takalane Nem...

In our fifth episode, PEN SA Vice President Yewande Omotoso asks author Nicole Dennis-Benn about the meaning of nationality, immigration, navigating multiple identities, coming out, her novels ( Here Comes the Sun and Patsy ) and the search for a sense of belonging. In this episode we stand in solidarity with writer and prominent human-rights defender Ales Bialiatski. He is currently in pre-trial...

Welcome to the fourth episode of Season Three of The Empty Chair Podcast: A Transatlantic Conversation. Our chair is Patricia Hayes, NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape. Our guests are John Edwin Mason, who teaches African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, and Stefanie Jason, a Sou...

Welcome to the third episode of Season Three of The Empty Chair. Writing teacher, editor, freelance cultural writer and music industry researcher Gwen Ansell chairs a conversation with pianist, composer and songwriter Thandi Ntuli; saxophonist, improviser and composer Linda Sikhakhane and composer, instrumentalist and scholar Prof Salim Washington. They explore shared experiences, history and...

In the second episode of Season Three of The Empty Chair, Mandisa Haarhoff, lecturer in English and Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town, chairs a wide-ranging conversation with C.A. Davids, author of How to be a Revolutionary (Penguin Random House South Africa & Verso Books) and Prof Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Read until you Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and L...

In the first episode of Season Three of The Empty Chair, Mandisa Haarhoff, lecturer in English and Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town, interviews Jehan Jones-Radgowski, author and Acting Public Affairs Officer for the US Consulate General in Cape Town. Jehan explains the origins and significance of Black History Month, which is celebrated annually in February in the US. They also disc...

Introducing Season Three of The Empty Chair, a podcast from PEN South Africa. Our long transatlantic conversation continues in Season Three as we host writers, musicians, historians and representatives from historic community radio stations, based in South Africa and the USA. This season focuses on Black History Month, which is observed annually in February in the US, and we reflect on and provoke...