The Empty Chair by PEN SA

Grace A. Musila asks Hugo ka Canham about his book Riotous Deathscapes. They explore riotous methods, rural Mpondoland, precarity, storytelling, death and life as well as the natural and ancestral worlds. Grace A. Musila is a Professor in the Department of African Literature at Wits University and the author of A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder  (James Cu...

Bongani Kona interviews Gabeba Baderoon and Roger Reeves about their books The History of Intimacy and Dark Days: Fugitive Essays . They remember early transformative encounters with literature and their beginnings as writers. They also confer about essays, poetry, interior lives, family and their current projects. Roger reads from his essay “Reading Fire, Reading the Stars” in addition to his poe...

Kudakwashe Vanyoro interviews John Marnell and Alejandra Oliva about their books Seeking Sanctuary and Rivermouth . They deliberate about telling other people’s stories, the experiences of LGBTIQ migrants, immigration policies, translation, faith-based organisations and solidarity. Kudakwashe Vanyoro  is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Wits University. He is the author of the forth...

Yewande Omotoso asks Camille Dungy about her latest book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. They delve into nature writing, gardening, radical generosity, writing revisions, the ethics of fellowship grants, hope and resilience. Yewande Omotoso trained as an architect and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She is the Vice-President and Treasurer of PEN S...

Vuyokazi Ngemntu invites LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Sihle Ntuli to reflect on their poetic practice, language and dispossession, literacies, influences, rootedness, Black women’s histories and music.  Vuyokazi Ngemntu is a writer-performer situated in Cape Town. She has received awards for her short stories and her work has appeared in The Kalahari Review , Herri , Ake Review and elsewhere. LaTas...

Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed talk with Betty Govinden about their book Durban’s Casbah . They reflect on personal and collective pasts, bunny chows and bioscopes, critical nostalgia, indentured labour, migration, jazz and the Casbah today. Betty Govinden is a retired academic, researcher, writer, poet and critic. She was awarded the English Academy of Southern Africa Gold Medal for distinguished...

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers interviews Sarah Lubala and Mahtem Shiferraw about their poetry collections, A History of Disappearance and Nomenclatures of Invisibility . Sarah and Mahtem read several of their poems and contemplate language, ancestors, writing for a collective, migration, loss and awe. Phillippa Yaa de Villiers lectures in Creative Writing at Wits University. She is the author of the p...

Mia Arderne asks Jade Song about their debut novel Chlorine. They discuss beliefs about mermaids, girlhood, magical realism, mental illness, writing about violence and sexual assault, reclaiming one’s body, queer narratives and advice for writers. Mia Arderne is the author of Mermaid Fillet (Kwela, NB Publishers, 2020). Mia holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She has...

Khanya Mtshali asks Jarred Thompson and Tyriek White about their novels The Institute for Creative Dying and We Are a Haunting. They share their experiences of publishing their first novels and muse about craft, literary influences, religion, death, transatlantic history and creative responses to infrastructural decay. Khanya Mtshali is a writer and critic from Johannesburg. She has an MA in Cultu...

KB Brookins talks with Maneo Mohale about their poetry collection Freedom House. They contemplate poetry, social justice, community, police brutality, Blackness and transness as well as hope. They both read poems from Freedom House. Maneo reads “Black Life circa 2029” and “T Shot #1” and KB reads “He/they in the streets, them/them in the sheets” and “T Shot #5: Ode to my Sharps Container”. Maneo M...

Sean O’Toole asks Bronwyn Law-Viljoen and Idra Novey about their novels Notes on Falling and Take What You Need. They discuss the emotional repertoires of their characters, the political context of their work, art-making as well as writing about mothers and daughters. Sean O’Toole is a writer, editor and curator based in Cape Town. His two books are Irma Stern: African in Europe - European in Afri...

Lester Walbrugh asks Manuel Muñoz about his latest collection of short stories: The Consequences. Manuel reflects on his Mexican-American identity, working on farms as a young boy and embracing his family’s stories. He discusses deportation, silence and queer codes, community, being seen and the inclusion of Spanish in his writing. Manuel and Lester also explore parallels between their lives in th...

Cristina Rivera Garza is in conversation with Stacy Hardy about her book Liliana’s Invincible Summer. Cristina reflects on the experience of writing this book – a celebration of the life of her sister Liliana, who was murdered in 1990 by an ex-boyfriend.  She considers alternative forms of justice, love, freedom, genre, the power of writing and language, subverting the narrative of patriarchy and...

Bongani Kona asks poet Charif Shanahan about his latest collection Trace Evidence: poems (Tin House, 2023). Charif reflects on his family background, the intricacies of mixed-race identity in America, Morocco, the meaning of home, his education as a poet, love, shame and the worth of poetry. He reads ‘Colonialism’ and ‘ “Mulatto” :: “Quadroon” ’ from Trace Evidence. Bongani Kona is a writer, edito...

Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi asks Athambile Masola and Makhosazana Xaba about their book Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home . They reflect on when they first encountered Noni’s writing, her life and her family, the origins of the phrase “I write what I like”, the difference between living abroad and exile, Black women travelling, transnational archives and the challenges of biographical research. Vic...

Angelo Fick asks Darryl Pinckney about his book Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan. Darryl remembers his friendship with critic and author Elizabeth Hardwick, who taught him that writing is a matter of reading. He reflects on his diaries, avant-garde New York in the 1970s, Robert Lowell,  feminism and Black politics, The New York Review of Books an...

Sisonke Msimang interviews Barbara Masekela about her memoir Poli Poli . Barbara remembers her childhood home with her grandmother and honours her generation of Black women. She contextualises her family’s life in the history of dispossession, mobility, apartheid and reflects on her exile in the U.S. and transatlantic cultural ties. Barbara also mentions her friendship with the late Keorapetse “Br...

Bongani Kona hosts Robin Coste Lewis for a discussion of her award-winning poetry collections To the Realisation of Perfect Helplessness and Voyage of the Sable Venus.  This capacious conversation includes a reckoning with mortality and a homage to the dead, brain damage and memory loss, poetry and metaphor, mentors, time as a tool of oppression, the life of Black Arctic explorer Matthew Henson, d...

Sandile Ngidi and Uhuru Phalafala honour the life and legacy of Keorapetse “Bra Willie” Kgositsile. Sandile asks Uhuru about Kgositsile’s exile in the U.S., his impact on the Black Arts Movement and the significance of Pan-Africanism. Uhuru also emphasises several influences on Kgositsile’s poetics and politics: his mother and grandmother, Setswana literature and language, music, as well as Amílca...

Ekow Duker asks Millard Arnold about his book The Testimony of Steve Biko . They consider the significance of Biko’s four and a half days on the witness stand in 1976, at the trial of nine student leaders from South African Students' Organisation (SASO) and the Black People's Convention (BPC).  Millard also reflects on his early life and education in the US, Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage...

Nosipho Mngomezulu asks Joel Cabrita about her groundbreaking new book Written Out: The Silencing of Regina Gelana Twala. Together, they discuss Twala’s life in South Africa and Eswatini, her writing (ethnography, fiction, letters and newspaper columns), academic gatekeeping, systems of oppression, Twala’s subversive politics as well as her family and legacy. Joel reflects on her own position...

Mandisa Haarhoff interviews Jaclyn Cole in the first episode of our Black History season. This episode airs on 28 February, the last day of Black History month 2023, and provides an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of this month. Among other topics, Mandisa and Jaclyn consider the significance of Howard University, African American studies, Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis-Education of the Negro (...

Thando Njovane chairs a discussion with Rešoketšwe Manenzhe and LaToya Watkins about their debut novels Scatterlings and Perish , respectively. They reveal which authors influenced their work, contemplate the transatlantic legacy of slavery and the South African Immorality Act (1927), de-centring whiteness, inter-generational trauma, stories of mothers and daughters, and possibilities of...

Angela Makholwa interviews Margie Orford and Marcie Rendon about their latest novels The Eye of the Beholder and Sinister Graves , respectively. They reflect on what first attracted them to the crime fiction genre. They grapple with violence against women, ongoing trauma, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, police brutality and which bodies matter. They also celebrate the Little Earth Protector...

Akil Kumarasamy and Alistair Mackay talk to Abdul-Malik Sibabalwe Oscar Masinyana about their novels Meet Us by the Roaring Sea and It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way, respectively . They explore ways of writing about the future and imagination as resistance. Their expansive conversation refers to climate collapse, Artificial Intelligence and technology, popular culture, care and hope. Abdul-Malik Sib...