A.R Goldsmith is a native Washingtonian, growing up in Montgomery County, Md. and graduating from the University of Maryland.  He lives in Ellicott City, Md with his wife, Pauline, of 40 years.  He has 2 children and 5 grandchildren.

⁠Aba Amissah Asibon is a Ghanaian writer and an SSDA Inkubator Fellow 2022. Her short fiction has been published in Guernica, Adda, The Johannesburg Review of Books and the Migrations: New Short Fiction from Africa anthology. She has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Miles Morland African Writing Scholarship. She is also a 2023 Wilbur Smith New Voices winner for her novel-in-progress.

Ahmed Ismail Yusuf has lived in Minneapolis since fleeing Somalia in the late 80s. He did not speak English when he arrived, he was a high-school dropout, and he was not sure what his actual age was. Today he has two college degrees and is the author of Somalis in Minnesota, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. In 2017, The History Theatre of St. Paul, Minnesota produced his short play, “A Crack in the Sky,” a memoir about how Yusuf found inspiration in Maya Angelou and Muhammad Ali during his early days as an immigrant to the U.S.

An alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie's Farafina workshop, Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s work has been featured in Quartz, Ozy, ZAM, Wasafiri, Popula, Africa Is A Country, and Catapult among others. She was longlisted for the 2018 Short Story Day Africa prize and in 2020 she was part of the critics Academy at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

ALLAN KOLSKI HORWITZ was born and raised in South Africa. In his twenties, he moved between the Middle East, Europe, and North America, before returning to live in Johannesburg in 1986. Since then, he has worked as an organizer and educator in the South African trade union and social housing movements. He is a writer, songwriter, and singer, a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group, and sits on the Botsotso Publishing editorial board. His short fiction has been published in three collections: Un/common Ground, Out of the Wreckage, and Meditations of a Non-White White. He has received the Olive Schreiner Prize for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Short Fiction.

Ameera Patel is in the storytelling business. She is an actor, writer, theatre-maker and poet residing in Johannesburg. She read for a BA in Theatre and Performance at the University of Cape Town in 2005 and in 2013 she received a distinction for her Masters in Creative Writing at Wits University in Johannesburg. Ameera has worked as a performer in both theatre and television, and has written for television and the theatre, notably the play Whistle Stop, which won both a Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award and the PANSA Best New Writer award in 2014 in her home country South Africa. Outside the Lines, Patel's first novel, was originally published by Modjaji Books and was long listed for a Barry Ronge Fiction Award (2017).

After unsuccessfully reaching rock star fame as a guitarist, A.M. Louw qualified as an attorney in 2000 and received a PhD in Law in 2010.  He has taught at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and currently teaches at Stellenbosch University. Through his fascination with corruption and love of reading crime fiction comes his first novel Phantom Pass.  A.M. Louw currently lives in Villiersdorp, South Africa with his partner and their teenage son.

Andreas Roman grew up on the Swedish west coast. He spent his childhood figuring out how to skip school to work on stories for the video games he was creating. Today, he’s a novelist as well as a writer and producer for the app and video games industry, where he's participated in the development of global apps like Sleep Cycle and video game franchises such as Mirror's Edge, Battlefield, InVector, Terminator, and Leo's Fortune, which won an Apple Design award. Andreas lives in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he has published ten novels in his native Swedish to critical acclaim, selling over 100,000 copies, and with several translations into Danish, German, and Norwegian.

Anthony Silverston is partner and Head of Development at Triggerfish Animation Studios in South Africa where he is currently overseeing a slate of projects in development and production.  These include Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, an anthology of 10 short films in production with Disney+, Mama K’s Team 4  with Netflix, and Kiya with Disney, eOne and Frogbox, as well as a number of feature films and TV series in development with various partners. In 2015, he oversaw the Story Lab, an initiative where 4 feature films and 4 TV series were chosen to be developed after a continent-wide search that drew almost 1400 entries. He also directed and co-wrote the feature film Khumba, which premiered in competition at Annecy International Animation Festival in 2013. The script, co-written with Raffaella Delle Donne, won a major UK scriptwriting competition in 2006 and was the first animation selected for No Borders Co-Production Market in its 30-year history. He has produced and written on Seal Team (released globally in December 2021 on Netflix), as well as Triggerfish’s first feature Zambezia.  Silverston was also producer of the short film Belly Flop which screened at over 135 festivals and won 14 awards, and the Blender short film, Troll Girl. Before joining Triggerfish, he completed three independent stop-motion shorts of his own.  He is also a published Microbiologist, which is a fact that has become increasingly less useful over the years.

Audra A. Diptée is a history professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. She’s a historian, author, and educator who studies the ways in which historical thinking can advance social justice issues today. Her research focuses on the Caribbean and Africa.

Barbara Adair is a novelist and writer. In Tangier we Killed the Blue Parrot was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2004. Her novel End was shortlisted for Africa Regional Commonwealth Prize. She contributed to Queer Africa and Queer Africa 2, and her writing, particularly her travel writing, has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. She is currently working with the Wits Writing Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Barbara Boswell is an educator and literary activist. She is an alumna of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she lived for several years, and has taught at universities in both the USA and South Africa. Barbara is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Cape Town, where she teaches Black women's diasporic literature, African feminist literary theory, and gender and sexuality.

Barbara Erasmus is a writer and journalist living in Cape Town. Having grown up in Zimbabwe, she spent twenty-five nomadic years following her husband’s career, which sparked an award-winning career in travel writing. Barbara has published three novels in South Africa: Kaleidoscope (Penguin, 2004), nominated for the Commonwealth Best First Novel; Even with Insects (Penguin, 2005); and Below Luck Level (Penguin, 2012). Her crime novel, Chameleon, was published in installments on the blog Crime Beat, which she edited for three years. This is her North American debut.

Becky Cerling Powers is a parenting columnist and editor of My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from “1998: Year of the Family,” a collection of faith-based family stories originally published in The El Paso Times.

Bill McCamley spent over 20 years in various public offices that include County Commissioner, State Representative, and New Mexico Secretary of Labor. His experience is wide and deep, with roles in areas as diverse as transportation, economic development, workforce readiness, mental health, marijuana legalization, real estate development, t-shirt sales, and swing dancing instruction. He has degrees from New Mexico State University and Harvard University, and currently lives in Las Cruces, NM with his dog Cooper.

Bridget Krone lives and works in a village called Hilton just outside Pietermaritzburg, in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa. Her office looks onto a field where cows graze in the winter and cranes (both crowned and blue) visit in the summer. She has spent most of her working life writing short novels and English language text books for school children in South Africa. Her favorite stories are those that, just when you expect a lesson, sing a song instead.

Bridget Pitt is a South African author and environmental activist who has published poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and three novels (Unbroken Wing, Kwela, 1998; The Unseen Leopard, Human & Rousseau, 2010; Notes from the Lost Property Department, Penguin, 2015). Two were long listed for the Sunday Times Literary Awards. Her second novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize (2011) and the Wole Soyinka African Literature Award (2012). She has recently co-authored a memoir of the spiritual wilderness guide, Sicelo Mbatha (Black Lion: Alive in the Wilderness, Jonathan Ball, 2021). Her short fiction has received a Commonwealth nomination and has been published in anthologies in South Africa, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Eye Brother Horn is her first book to be published by a North American publisher.

Bryan Kromm grew up in Penticton, British Columbia and is a dual citizen of both America and Canada.  He has spent time in both countries. Bryan was a collegiate athlete and now coaches hockey for a living and writes in his free time.

Caroline Kurtz lived in Ethiopia from ages 5-18 and worked in Kenya and Sudan as an adult.  After her husband Mark died in 2013, Caroline started a nonprofit organization to bring solar energy and women’s development to Maji, still beyond the grid, in the corner of Ethiopia where she grew up. See DevelopMaji.org and https://carolinekurtzauthor.com/ for more information. She now lives in Portland, Oregon.

South African writer Chanette Paul has published 41 crime, suspense and romance novels over her prolific career. A bestselling author in her native country, she makes her U.S./English debut with Sacrificed.

Chanette’s stories are marked by strong female characters, women who earn their strength by confronting their demons, both internal and external, and by taking full responsibility for their choices. Her books are also known for the subtle social commentary and dry humor.

In South Africa, Chanette has been nominated six times for the prestigious ATKV-Woordveertjies award and has won the South African Lekkerlit award 3 times. She serves as an editor for LAPA Publishers. Sacrificed was translated into Dutch and launched in 2015 at the Antwerp Book Fair.

CHRIS VAN WYK was a multiple award-winning writer of poetry, books for children and teenagers, short stories, and novels. Van Wyk received critical acclaim for his poem, "In Detention," on the suspicious deaths that befell South African political prisoners during Apartheid, as well as his abridgement of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom for children. He received multiple awards for his contributions to the South African literary space, including the Sanlam Literary Award, the Olive Schreiner Prize, and the Maskew Miller Longman Literature Award.

Born in Douala, Cameroon in 1968 and raised in France, Christophe Cassiau-Haurie is a library curator and comics specialist. He is currently Director of Public Services for the National and University Library of Strasbourg, after having held several positions in Africa including time in Mauritius and five years in the DRC. He also serves as director of the comic book collection of L'Harmattan, one of the largest French book publishers. Cassiau-Haurie is the author of several articles and collective works on the state of publishing and comics in Africa. He has authored and contributed to numerous graphic novels in French, most of which are based on African histories. He did his postgraduate studies in African Studies and Public Law.

Ciiku Ndung'u-Case is the founder of the Cheza Nami Foundation, a California based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that promotes play-based cultural education and diversity awareness, inspired by Ciiku’s childhood in rural Kenya and the lack of accessible educational resources on Africa for her twins, born in 2007. Ciiku's work in creating cultural awareness programs has appeared in CBS News, TEDx Livermore, the Oakland Magazine, and several California news outlets. An immigrant and first generation college graduation, Ciiku holds a Master's degree in Cell and Molecular Biology and is a leader in strategic planning in the pharmaceutical industry. Wanjiku, Child of Mine is based on Ciiku's childhood in Kenya.

As well as being a writer, Colleen Higgs is also a publisher, she started the ground-breaking independent southern African women's press, Modjaji Books in 2007. She lives in Cape Town with her daughter and a cat. Looking for Trouble is her first collection of short stories. She also has two collections of poetry Lava Lamp Poems (2011) and Halfborn Woman (2004) all published by Hands-On Books.

She was recognised for her work in publishing by the Mail and Guardian, and was featured in their Book of Women 2011 in the Arts & Culture category.

Consuelo Roland left the information technology business to complete an MA Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel, The Good Cemetery Guide, was short-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. It was also selected via an e-mail poll of readers as one of 30 Centre for the Book's "must read" South African Books for 2007. She lives with her husband and son and a menagerie of pets.

Craig Higginson is a writer, theatre director and lecturer who lives in Johannesburg. His novels and plays have been published, translated and produced widely internationally and won several prestigious awards. Craig has a PhD in Creative Writing and was recently a recipient of the Hawthornden Foundation Residency, where he will be writing the sequel to his IEB matric set-work novel, The Dream House. The Ghost of Sam Webster is Craig’s first novel with Catalyst Press.

Daniel Clarke is a Cape Town-based artist working in animation, film and illustration. He started his career in animation in 2008 at Triggerfish Animation Studios, a collaboration that has lasted up until today and has seen him act as Production Designer and Art director on projects such as the feature film Khumba, BBC’s Stick Man and Snail and the Whale. As an illustrator and designer he has worked, amongst others, with clients such as Netflix, Animal Logic, The Line, National Geographic Kids, Nike, Adidas, and Penguin Random House. Daniel has worked as an illustrator and art director for international feature films such as Chronicle (Josh Trank, 2012); The Giver (Philip Noyce, 2014); and Chappie (Neil Blomkamp, 2015). Daniel recently directed Aau’s Song, a Star Wars: Visions film from Lucasfilm, available on Disney+ in May 2023.

Daniel Snaddon is an artist, illustrator, and film director of Scottish-South African and Chinese-Australian descent, who grew up in Nelspruit, a short drive away from the Kruger National Park. He has worked in the animation and film industries for fourteen years, best known for his work with Triggerfish Animation Studios and with Magic Light Pictures' animated BBC Christmas specials. Among these, Daniel served as animation supervisor on the Academy Award nominated "Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes", co-director on the BAFTA nominated "Stick Man", and as director on both the Annie award winning "The Snail and the Whale" and the International Emmy winning "Zog". Daniel's most recent work, his fourth Magic Light Pictures Christmas special, "The Smeds and the Smoos", based on the book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (authors of The Gruffalo), was awarded the Audience Award at the New York International Children's Film Festival in March 2023. Daniel served as the founding director of CTIAF, South Africa’s premiere animation festival, for 4 years.

DAVID MANN is an award-winning writer, editor, and art critic from South Africa. His reviews and essays on art, as well as his short fiction, have appeared in journals and publications including Springerin in Germany, Portside Review in Australia, and Contemporary Lynx in the UK. He currently works as the writer for The Centre for the Less Good Idea, an interdisciplinary arts incubator in Johannesburg. Once Removed is his debut collection of short fiction, and was awarded the Thomas Pringle Short Story Prize in 2024 for the short story "Meaningful Contributions."

David Muirhead was born and raised in East Africa and his fascination and love for African wildlife began at an early age. He was educated at schools in Uganda, Kenya and the UK, and attended St Andrews University in Scotland, graduating with a degree in Philosophy. His career has spanned finance, trade development, economic research, publishing and journalism, and he has worked all over Africa, as well as in Europe and the Middle East. He is currently a freelance journalist and writes for magazines, notably Wildside, a South African ecotourism and nature conservation magazine which he founded in 1999 in partnership with KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation (now KZN Wildlife). He has authored several books, including The Curious Case of the Imaginary Tourist, a collection of satirical and humorous short stories which drew acclaim from the British press, and a novel, The Clamour King, published in London. Random House's Struik Nature imprint published his two anthologies of riotous, irrespectable essays on animals, which have been combined into one volume for North America. He now lives near Cape Town and is married with two children and two grandchildren. His daughter and her family live in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Dennis R. Dalton is a retired Fortune 500 Corporate Security Executive and security management consultant and is a published author of 4 non-fiction corporate security management texts and dozens of professional articles. Dennis has served as an expert witness in premise’s liability issues involving mass shootings, gang initiations, terrorists attacks on high-profile properties, including the World Trade Center, and served as Director of Academic Affairs for a large accredited private university. He currently resides in North Carolina.

Donica Merhazion, born in the midst of Ethiopia's Red Terror, channels her family’s experiences into her debut novel, Born at the End of the World. A former journalist and educator with degrees in journalism and education, she calls Eritrea, Zambia, and the United States home. Passionate about storytelling, she inspires her students to love learning and embrace their potential while finding time to write in her favorite quiet spots.

Doreen Anyango is a Ugandan fiction writer, scriptwriter and biotechnologist, who was born and raised in Kampala. Her short fiction has appeared online in several journals. She has published short stories in print anthologies with FEMRITE, Writivism, Short Story Day Africa and Riptide. She was long-listed for the Writivism prize for fiction in 2016 and the SSDA prize in 2020. Her novel manuscript titled ‘A Darkness with Her Name On It’ was shortlisted for the Island Prize for debut African novelists. ⁠

Dr. Nina Jablonski is an anthropologist and paleobiologist whose research on the evolution of skin color has been published in many scholarly journals including Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Nature, and American Psychologist. She is the author of several books, including Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color and Skin: A Natural History. She has also been a featured TED Talk speaker, and has appeared as a guest on shows such as The Colbert Report and Bill Nye’s Science Rules! podcast. Dr. Jablonski has extensive experience in the development of science-related youth curriculum from grades K-12.

Edwin Okolo seeks to explore through his fiction lived experiences that are alien to him because of his gender and race. He has written for several blogs and literary magazines including Kalahari Review, The Lonely Crowd, speculative fiction at Omenana, Sable Lit Mag and a wildly popular webseries at TheNakedConvos.com. He is currently an editor at Stories.ng and finishing his first novel.

ELISE CHIDLEY was born in eSwatini and went to school and university in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her first novel, Your Roots Are Showing (published by Grand Central, and by Orion in the UK as The Wrong Sort of Wife), was nominated for Best First Book and Best Single Title Contemporary Romance at the RITA Awards. She received her MFA from Penn State and now lives in Connecticut, teaching creative writing at The Westport Writers' Workshop. The Raven, the Wolf, and the Rose is her first YA novel.

Elizabeth Gabel holds a degree in English Literature and Journalism from the University of New Mexico. Fascinated by the whimsical and widely documented myths of ancient Ireland, Gabel indulged her passions by scouring old books stores for the stories lost by time. Those stories overflowed onto the blank pages of her imagination.

Elle Evans is Welsh, though having moved so many times, her accent is decidedly mid-Atlantic. She is currently penning three novels on the go, one of which is the sequel to Ship in the Sky. Elle is also a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, working privately from her home practice in Cape Town, South Africa.

Emily Pensulo is a Zambian writer masquerading as a banker during her weekdays. She holds an undergraduate degree in Business Administration and a master’s degree in Economic Policy Management. She’s written a biography of a local conservationist which is yet to be published and her writing has appeared in local magazines such as the Bulletin and Record and the Zacci Journal. She has also been published by the Kenyan magazine, Down River Road. In 2018, Emily was longlisted for the Kalemba Prize for her short story, ‘Dowry.’ And in 2020, she worked as a scriptwriter for a film project called, ‘Lifeblood,’ directed by a BAFTA nominated Director. ⁠

Evelyn Vu is one of 1.5 million “boat people” who tried to escape Vietnam. She was one of the lucky ones to succeed. Water All Around, her debut novel, is loosely based on her own memories and experience. Through her book, she hopes others, including children, and the children’s children of immigrants, will come to understand the struggle during this period in history, and how/why so many people end up living in foreign lands. She hopes the novel, and her own personal story, will resonate with those who took similar paths and bring empathy to the plight of refugees.

Faraaz Mahomed is a researcher in the field of mental health and human rights, based between New York and his native South Africa. His short stories and travel writing have appeared in Granta, Boston Review, The Georgia Review, the Sunday Times, and other publications. In 2016, he won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the African Region with his story “The Pigeon.”

Futhi Ntshingila grew up in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Now she lives and works in Pretoria. She is a former journalist and holds Masters Degree in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution. She loves telling stories about the marginalized corners of society, which includes women and children in South Africa and particularly those who live in the squatter camps. In her two novels, she features strong women who empower themselves despite circumstances that seek to disempower them. We Kiss Them With Rain is her debut into the North American market.

Genna Gardini is a South African writer, theatre-maker, and educator. She is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and recently won the 2020 CASA award to finish her latest play, Many Scars. Genna’s poetry collection, Matric Rage, received a commendation for the Ingrid Jonker Prize and she was a 2016 National Fellow at the Institute for Creative Arts.

Goretti Kyomuhendo is one of Uganda’s leading novelists and founding director of the African Writers Trust. Her novels include The First Daughter (1996), Secrets No More (1999), which won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel in the same year. Goretti holds an MA degree in Creative Writing from the University of KwaZulu, Natal, South Africa, and taught creative writing in the same university in 2004.

Hannes Barnard is a multi-genre fiction author of Afrikaans and English novels. In 2019 he debuted with the Afrikaans version of Halley’s Comet with the English version following in 2022. Between 2020 and 2024 his apocalyptic YA trilogy, Wolk, Roet, and Vuur captivates readers and critics alike. He is currently working on the translation of these titles – and writing political thrillers in-between.

Heidi Paul is an equine advocate, horse trainer, and riding instructor in Los Angeles. She served eleven years as the Park Ranger Mounted Trainer for the City of Los Angeles. She has worked with youth-at-risk horse programs, trained many trail and endurance horses, completed two 100-mile Tevis endurance rides, and is involved in local politics regarding equine issues. She has degrees in STEM and Sociology and teaches Equine Science at Los Angeles Pierce College.

Helen Brain was born in Australia in 1960 and raised in Durban, South Africa. After school, she studied music at the University of Cape Town. Before settling to a life writing and teaching writing online, she was a freelance journalist and editor, a screenprinter and crafter, and taught English, music, and Ancient Greek. A mother to three sons and grandmother to one grandson, Brain lives in Muizenberg, South Africa with her husband.

Henry Trotter is the author of Sugar Girls & Seamen: A Journey into the World of Dockside Prostitution in South Africa. Hailing from California, he has lived in Africa for 20 years and written extensively on African history, culture and education. He is based in Cape Town with his wife and daughter.

Dr. Holly Y. McGee is a historian at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. McGee’s research, teaching, and publishing in the fields of African American History, comparative black politics, and South African history provide critical insight into historical narratives regarding the social creation of “race” and subsequent proliferation of racism in modern society. She is the author of "One Day We Are Going Home": The Long Exile of Elizabeth Mafeking, and founder of the nonprofit National Black Teachers Association.

I.M. Aiken worked on ambulances off and on since the 1980s, starting in the Boston area where she was born and raised. She served one tour in Iraq as a civilian member of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and now lives in Vermont.

Idza Luhumyo is a Kenyan writer with training in screenwriting and a background in law. Her artistic practice lies at the intersection of law, film, and literature. She is currently studying towards an MA in Comparative Literature at SOAS, University of London. She is the first ever recipient of the inaugural Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award. Idza won the 2022 Caine Prize for her short story "Five Years Next Sunday", featured in this collection.

Innocent Chizaram Ilo is Igbo. Their works interrogate gender, class, politics and sexuality. They were awarded the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa Region. A finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Short Story Day Africa Prize, their work has been published in Fireside Magazine, Overland, adda, Strange Horizons, Granta and has won the Africa YMCA and Oxford Festival of the Arts short story contests.

Irma Venter is a bestselling South African crime fiction writer and a journalist at a media company in Johannesburg.  She writes books about strong women, interesting men and that fascinating space between right and wrong.

Jacob M'hango is a writer of literary fiction with themes that seek to explore the human condition. He is the author of a story collection, Curse of the Fig, published by Gadsden Publishers in 2018. A rave review of the book appeared in the Zambia Daily Mail. The book became one of the required texts for students pursuing an MA in Literature at the University of Zambia. It was also approved by the Curriculum Development Centre as a supplementary literature text for secondary schools in Zambia. Jacob lives with his family in Lusaka. He received an MA in History from the University of Zambia in 2020. When he is not writing or reading or being inspired by silence, he likes to watch a good drama, thriller or mystery. He is currently working on a novel.

Creator: James Clarke was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and educated at the University of Cape Town, where he studied history and literature and completed his Masters in Creative Writing as a Harry Crossley Fellow. In 2016, he was the South Africa finalist in fiction for the PEN International New Young Voices Award. Kariba is his first graphic novel collaboration.

Author: Jane Kurtz is an award-winning author of more than forty children’s books. She lived in Ethiopia from the age of two where family members worked for nearly thirty years.  Currently, Jane is an adviser to Ethiopia Reads and is the creative director of the Open Hearts Big Dreams book program and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Jason Mykl Snyman currently serves on the board of Short Story Day Africa and as the Fiction Editor for Expound magazine. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including New Contrast, Jalada Africa, Bloody Parchment, Kalahari Review, Helios Quarterly, The Examined Life Review, Expound and more.

Jeffrey P. Armstrong grew up in New York and Florida and as a teenager hitchhiked around America in the late 1960s. He has worked as a salesman in the health industries and as a registered nurse. He lives in Gulfport, Florida with his wife.

Author: Born in Hartford, CT, Jeremiah Knight brings a rich heritage of African American and Caribbean roots to the global culinary stage. A graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, he further expanded his international perspective through studies at the University of Westminster in London, England, and earned his master’s degree from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy/International Affairs.

As a U.S. diplomat, Jeremiah has worked across five continents, immersing himself in diverse cultures and cuisines while shaping U.S. foreign policy. His passion for global flavors has led to a celebrated nine-year tenure as the author of A World of Flavors, a popular column in Manjar Magazine (Dominican Republic), where he shares the vibrant recipes and culinary traditions he has encountered throughout his travels.

Now, in Diplomat in the Kitchen, Jeremiah invites you on a culinary journey across every continent, blending his diplomatic experiences with his love for food. This cookbook is more than a collection of recipes—it’s a passport to the world’s flavors, bringing together dishes that tell the stories of culture, history, and the universal language of food.

Jo-Ann Bekker began writing short fiction in 2012, after working as a newspaper reporter for many years. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University and her short fiction has been published in journals in South Africa and the United States. Asleep Awake Asleep is her first collection of stories. She was born in East London, and lives in Knysna with her family.

For most of her adult life, Joanne Bloch was an exhibiting visual artist. Her work was shown on both solo and group exhibitions, including the 2013 Venice Biennale. In parallel with her art practice, Joanne worked as a freelance writer, specialising in human rights-related and educational materials. In 2011, six months into her PhD in Fine Art, Joanne was faced with irreversible sight loss. After she completed her PhD, her deteriorating vision forced her to abandon art- making and concentrate entirely on writing. Joanne has always been especially interested in life writing, and worked as interviewer, photographer and writer on several interview-based books for young adults and children. Her new book Unseen emerged as a response to her own experience of visual impairment, a growing awareness of the ignorance, stigma and discrimination confronting visually impaired South Africans and a strong desire for marginalized voices to be more widely heard. She lives in Cape Town.

Joanne Hichens is an author and editor living in Cape Town. She has published several novels, including Out To Score (co-authored), Divine Justice, Sweet Paradise, and for young adults, Stained and Riding the Wave. She had edited numerous short story collections, including Bad Company, an anthology of South African crime fiction endorsed by Lee Child. Her memoir, Death and the After Parties, was released by Karavan Press in November 2020.

Jose Rodriguez is a debut author of Puerto Rican descent, a veteran of the United States Military, a recovering drug addict, and a father. He lives in Iowa.

Joseph Olejak is a convinced Quaker who chose not to participate in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by willfully refusing to pay income tax. Having come to the understanding that there is that of God in all people, it became impossible to lend support for the Middle East wars by paying income tax. After serving time for his peace witness, Joseph Olejak now works on peace and justice issues within the Old Chatham Quaker Meeting.

Josephine Sokan is a Nigerian-born writer who moved to the UK as a child. She fell in love with literature in those tender years and now writes poetry, short stories, audio and stage scripts and articles on faith and motherhood. She is currently working on her first novel. Josephine relishes filling blank pages with stories that ask important questions. She enjoys exploring the delicate and difficult. Her work often deals with themes such as female identity, motherhood, the perceptions and attitudes towards mental health, “otherness” and faith from an Afro-European and very personal lens. She is a wife to her best friend and a mum to two cheeky little boys. She is a lover of romance but despises love stories. She is also a Nollywood connoisseur and enjoys experimental cuisine (eat at your own peril). Follow her @jo.sokan

Julia Smuts Louw is a South African screenwriter, primarily working in animation. She has won a Muse Award for animation screenwriting, and her work has appeared on Nickelodeon Digital, Disney XD, Cartoon Network Africa and other channels. Her poetry and essays have appeared in New Contrast, Stanzas, Literary Mama, Animal Literary Journal and elsewhere. Her short story Paper House was published in the anthology Touch: Stories of Contact (2009). She lives in Cape Town with her husband and two children.

Julian Cobbing studied history at King’s College, London University, under AG Dickens and Michael Howard, and went on to a PhD at Lancaster University. Until his retirement he was a professor of history at Rhodes University.Creators will be added soon.

Kabubu Mutua is an SSDA Inkubator Fellow 2022. He grew up in Machakos, Kenya. He was longlisted for the 2021 Afritondo Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the 2022 Peters Fraser and Dunlop Queer Fiction Prize. His work appears in The Hope, The Prayer, The Anthem anthology by Afritondo, A Long House, and the Commonwealth Writers adda magazine. Follow him @kabubumutua

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola is a poet, essayist and writer of fiction. His work interrogates anxiety, broken lineage, [in]sanity, grief and the black body as a warfront. His debut collection, In My Country, We’re All Crossdressers was published as a chapbook by Praxis. He is the founder of the SPRINNG Literary Movement.

Karen Vermeulen is an artist, illustrator and teacher living in Cape Town, South Africa, known for her happy, uplifting and quirky creations. She is the illustrator of two Catalyst Press children’s books, It's Just Skin, Silly! (2023) and Wanjiku, Child of Mine (2024), middle grade books Small Mercies (2020) and The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap (2022) as well as many Catalyst Press book covers.

Born in Jelenia Góra, Poland, Karina M. Szczurek lived in Austria, the United States and Wales, before finding a home in South Africa. She is the author of Truer than Fiction: Nadine Gordimer Writing Post-Apartheid South Africa (2008), Invisible Others (2014) and The Fifth Mrs Brink (2017), and she is the editor of Touch: Stories of Contact (2009), Encounters with André Brink (2010), Contrary: Critical Responses to the Novels of André Brink(with Willie Burger, 2013), Water: New Short Fiction from Africa (with Nick Mulgrew, 2015), Misplaced and Other Stories: New Short Fiction from African Kids (2017, with Catherine Shepherd), and most recently, You Make Me Possible: The Love Letters of Karina M. Szczurek and André Brink (2018). Her play for young adults, A Change of Mind, won the MML Literature Award in the Category English Drama in 2012. She also writes short stories, essays, and poetry. In 2018, she received the Thomas Pringle Award for her book reviewing. She is a proud board member of PEN SA and SSDA.

Karl Luntta spent a dozen years in Southern Africa and the South Pacific with the US Peace Corps and other organizations. He served as the media relations director for a New York State university and is a former journalist and newspaper and magazine columnist. He has published short fiction in numerous journals and is the author of the novel Know it By Heart (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone, Chicago, Ill., USA) and short story collection Swimming (SUNY Press, Albany, NY, USA).

Karoline Anderson is a pediatrician with a love of books. Born in Vancouver, Canada, she currently lives with her husband, golden retriever Jax, and cat Smoky on a lake in Nebraska. She runs whenever she can and has completed several triathlons and one marathon. Her two amazing daughters are off making their own way in the world and are always making her proud.

Kendra Powers is fourteen years old. She lives in Colorado with her two sisters and two brothers. Bait is her pet toad, which she caught in the nearby river while visiting her grandparents and aunt, who is one of the publishers of this book. An artist, she knits, crochets, makes hats for her toad, and takes photos.

Kevin Mogotsi studied BA (Hons) Broadcasting and Journalism as an undergraduate at Limkokwing University in Gaborone, where his interest for writing was nurtured. Shortly thereafter, he started writing short films, plays and short stories.

Khumbo Mhone is an actor turned marketer and entrepreneur living and working in Malawi. She received her undergraduate degree in Theatre and English from the University of Denver in Colorado before moving to New York where she worked as a professional actor for a year. Khumbo moved back to Malawi in 2015 and is currently the Business Development and Marketing Manager at Unicaf University. A contributor to Enthuse Magazine (an online publication based in Zimbabwe), she spends her free time writing her fiction blog, helping the community through Rotaract International, and working on her new novel about rain priestesses in pre-colonial Malawi.⁠ Follow her @kcmhone

L. G. Walters is a storyteller from the wild and wonderful hills of Scotland, where animals talk, trees whisper secrets, and every page blooms with joy. She crafts tales for children filled with curious creatures, playful lessons, and the magic of learning through nature. With a heart full of wonder and a head full of ideas, Lisa turns each story into a little adventure of laughter and love.

Laura Camacho Frias grew up in a small industrial town in the North of Spain. Despite her initial dream of becoming a translator for the United Nations, life happened; she studied engineering instead and moved to Portugal to complete her first degree. This turned out to be the beginning of a relentlessly high-paced 20+ year professional career, during which she worked in product and project management across several multinational industries, overseeing multi-million-dollar projects and managing brilliant minds.

Because Laura is only human — despite other people's opinions — this way of life contributed significantly to a health scare. That's when she rediscovered her passion for storytelling and became a full-time writer, focusing on stories heavily inspired by her own personal experiences.

Her partner, three kids, and two dogs ensure she still can't have either a proper relaxing day or a full writing day, but deep down, she wouldn't change it for the world. They all live together in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

As Elena, one of the characters in her debut novel Unwritten, puts it: "Suddenly, everything fell into place, and I knew what I had to do. I had to write. That's why I started again.”

Raised on radio, Lee Sanders is a Texas author who likes to write from the hip. His passions include guitars, grilling, and golf, although he’s not afraid of perusing a classic novel or catching a football game. He lives in Fort Worth with his wife, Zina, and their two daughters, Emilia and Caroline. He was born and raised in Texarkana and graduated with a degree in History from East Texas State. Under the Light of Fireflies is his debut novel.

Leo Daly is the son of iconic South African Illustrator and writer Niki Daly.  He lives with his wife Magriet Brink in a tiny house by the sea on the southern tip of Africa.  You can follow Leo and Magriet @we_are_creativehouse on Instagram.

Liam Brickhill is a freelance journalist from Zimbabwe. He is a multidisciplinary creative. He has worked in Southern Africa, England and India as a freelance cricket journalist, writes short fiction, and has produced and edited several music videos and an award-winning short film. Liam is a 2020 Africa Is a Country fellow and is working on his debut novel.

LILY GARDNER grew up in Minneapolis longing to be blonde and to live in California, surfing and writing poetry. Over the years her tastes changed: California became Oregon and poetry became mysteries. She has written three novels, including two noir mysteries, A Bitch Called Hope and Betting Blind. Lily lives in Portland with her husband, two corgis, and several thousand books.

Lisa Maria Burgess hand-stitches textile art to illustrate her bilingual books for children. While her first language is English, she speaks Spanish and French with fluency, and enjoys learning the basics of any language she has the pleasure of meeting. Lisa currently divides her time between the United States and Bénin, grew up in México, and has lived around the world as a United Nations spouse. She holds a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a wife and mother.

Luke Molver, author and illustrator: Luke Molver has always known that his life would be fuelled by storytelling. He studied Fine Art and Graphic Design at the Durban University of Technology and works as a freelance illustrator and comic book creator in Cape Town, South Africa. He has produced a number of comic books and his work has been published in a variety of graphic anthologies including the Laugh It Off annual, Velocity, Mamba Comix and GrafLit: Graveyard Literature.

M.C. Kasper was born and mostly raised in Maryland. From her younger years living on a farm, to her college years working in the Museum of Natural History at Frostburg State University, she has immersed herself in the lives of animals. Writing is amongst M.C.’s many creative interests, including photography, painting, and baking. She holds a Bachelor’s in English, and now lives in Severn, Maryland with her husband and daughter.

MacSmart Ojiludu is a writer and freelance content creator living in Nigeria. He has a Bachelors in Technology from the Federal University of Technology Owerri. His fiction deals with themes of surrealism and oddity.

Malcolm Himschoot is a writer, minister, and educator. The United Church of Christ, a historic denomination, made much of his ordination as an out trans man by producing the indie documentary Call Me Malcolm in 2005. His previous writing has appeared in edited anthologies and journals.

Martin Steyn began writing Stephen King-inspired horror stories in his teens. Given his interest in the darker recesses of human beings, it was probably unavoidable that he would become fascinated by serial killers. After obtaining degrees in Psychology and Criminology, he studied serial killers and profiling. He also wrote seven true crime articles for the Crime Library website.

But the dream was always to write fiction, particularly realistic crime fiction. This led to much research into the South African Police Service and its forensic units. In 2014 Donker Spoor was published by LAPA Uitgewers, and was awarded the ATKV-Woordveertjie for Suspense Fiction the following year. In 2017 it will be published in English as Dark Traces. Steyn is the translator for Dark Traces.

Steyn prefers to tell the story through the eyes of the detective, that individual with the extraordinary task of finding justice for those whose final chapter ends up being written in a murder docket.

Born in Germany in the 1960s to war-traumatised  parents, Martina Dahlmanns grew up in middle class suburbia, surrounded by loaded silences and unacknowledged prejudice. For as long as she can remember, writing has been her go-to-place, allowing her to express the unthinkable and make sense of her feelings. She first came to South Africa on a holiday after the first democratic elections, missed her flight back and never left. Her writing career includes making up Chinese subtitles for Swedish porn and plotting weekly murders for a radio mystery-show in Berlin. She lives in Cape Town with her partner and their three children.

Born and bred in Gugulethu, South Africa, Tumi grew up in the last years of apartheid,  grappling from an early age with issues of social injustice and racism. Motivated  to understand and challenge herself and those around her, she co-founded “This Dialogue Thing” , studied psychology and took up boxing. She recently submitted her masters thesis and lives with her partner and their child in Somerset West.

Masiyaleti Mbewe is a queer Zambian afrofuturist writer, photographer, activist, academic, TEDx alumnus and Masters in Arts student based in Windhoek, Namibia. Her work revolves around the use of various mediums to navigate and negotiate alternative African futures using the confluence of language and cultural exchange in the representation of Africans in popular culture. Her fiction writing also aims to examine African technologies and the digitization of African futures.

Mason O’Connor grew up in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. He studied Mathematics at Stellenbosch University, and works as a data analyst in Cape Town. He has a passion for storytelling, music, games and puzzles, and the outdoors.

Max Annas is the author of fictional and non-fictional books. Before writing novels he was working as a journalist and published on food production, right wing youth culture and philosophy. He worked for film festivals and organized screenings in Germany, South Africa and Mozambique. Research on South African Jazz at the University of Fort Hare (East London, South Africa). Novels: Die Farm (2014), Die Mauer (2016), Illegal (2017) and Finsterwalde (2018).

Mbozi Haimbe was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia and lives in the Norfolk, UK with her family. A qualified Social Worker by profession, Mbozi’s short story ‘Madam’s Sister’ won the Africa region prize of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2019, and a 2020 PEN America/Robert J. Dau Prize. Mbozi has a Master of Studies in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice award by Arts Council England in January 2020. She is currently working on her debut novel, an Afrofuturistic story loosely based on the Makishi masquerade traditions of the North-western people of Zambia. Mbozi was shortlisted for a Nommo Prize for her story "Shelter", featured in this collection.

MEL KELLY is originally from Manchester, England. She worked at London Zoo as a senior keeper and then in veterinary nursing before going on to study film theory. An English-language editor and writer since arriving in Windhoek, Namibia in 1998, she also manages a small-scale women’s upcycling project, Sew Good Namibia. Her fiction has appeared in the Kalahari Review and she has contributed regular opinion pieces to The Namibian newspaper on social, cultural, and economic issues.

Melusi Nkomo was born and bred in Zimbabwe. He lives and studies in Switzerland. He has been published in Wasafiri Magazine and New Frame and shortlisted for the 2018 Wasafiri Prize for New Writing. He holds a doctoral degree in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

Michelle Hattingh was born in South Africa in 1988. She attended school in Port Elizabeth and studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Stellenbosch University. She went on to do her Honours in Psychology at Cape Town University and now lives in Cape Town. Michelle works as senior online content producer at Marie Claire SA. Her work has been published in Elle SA, Marie Claire SA and Mail & Guardian. I’m the Girl Who Was Raped is her first book.

Mike Nicol is an author, journalist, editor and a teacher of creative and non-fiction narrative writing. He has published a number of crime thrillers. His thrillers have all featured on the KrimiZeit Top 10 in Germany and he has been shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year award in Holland and the Prix SNCF Du Polar in France. His non-fiction includes memoirs, biographies and reportage. He has also published two volumes of poetry.

MISHKA HOOSEN is a writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing program at Rhodes University and Interlochen Arts Academy. After apprenticing as a perfumer for a year, her current research focuses on the cultural history of perfume, and her work deals mainly with the senses, queerness, and embodiment.

Moso Sematlane is a writer and filmmaker living in Maseru, Lesotho. His works have been published in Nat. Brut, The Kalahari Review, and adda, the online literary magazine of the Commonwealth Foundation. His story “Tetra Hydro Cannabinol” was shortlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and his film “The Season Hyssops” won best unproduced script at the Writer’s Guild of South Africa Muse. He is an assistant editor at Lolwe. ⁠Follow Moso @mososematlane.⁠

Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a South African author who lives in Cape Town.  He is trained in the economics of built environment, reads history and literature as something more than a hobby. He’s particularly passionate about the South African Frontier history and the wars of land dispossession.

MXOLISI NYEZWA was born in 1967 in New Brighton, South Africa. He is the author of three books of poems in English—Song Trials (2000), New Country (2008), and Malikhanye (2011)—and a book of Xhosa poems, Ndiyoyika (2016). His poetry has appeared in many anthologies in South Africa and internationally. In 1997, Nyezwa founded the multilingual cultural journal Kotaz, which he still edits, and he is also a publisher of books in Xhosa under the imprint Imbizo Arts. He runs a small business and urban chicken farm in Motherwell, outside Gqeberha, South Africa.

Máire Fisher is a writer, writing mentor and editor. Her first novel, Birdseye, was published in South Africa in 2014 by Penguin Random House. Her second, The Enumerations, was published in South Africa by Umuzi in August 2018. Máire’s work has been published in several anthologies including Incredible Journey, Just Keep Breathing: South African Birth Stories; Twist: Short Stories Inspired by Tabloid Headlines, Women Flashingand Writing the Self. She was born in Zambia, educated in Zimbabwe, and currently resides in South Africa, where she runs several renowned writing workshops.

Máire Fisher is a writer, writing mentor and editor. Birdseye, originally published in South Africa by Penguin Random House, is now being released in North America. Her second, The Enumerations, was published by Catalyst in 2025. Máire’s work has been published in several anthologies including Incredible Journey, Just Keep Breathing: South African Birth Stories; Twist: Short Stories Inspired by Tabloid Headlines, Women Flashingand Writing the Self. She was born in Zambia, educated in Zimbabwe, and currently resides in South Africa, where she runs several renowned writing workshops.

N. A. Dawn writes essays, poetry and literary speculative fiction, chiefly concerned with ecological politics and the prickly problem of human flourishing. He holds a BA in English Literature and Environmental Science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and has been featured in New Contrast Literary Magazine and Short Story Day Africa. He is known for philosophical digressions, drumming on everything, producing improbably vivid sound effects with his mouth, and for someone who spends so much time at a desk, his roundhouse kicks are actually quite nimble.⁠ Follow Nick @nadawnauthor

Nadia Ahidjo is a Pan-African feminist writer and development professional based in Dakar, Senegal. She uses her experience in the development sector to weave together fiction and non-fiction stories. Her other work has been published by Afreada and African Feminisms, and is available online.

Najwa Binshatwan is a Libyan academic and novelist. She is the author of three novels: The Slave Yards (2016), Orange Content (2008), and The Horses' Hair (2005) in addition to collections of short stories and plays.

Nicholas A. Dawn is a South African/American novelist, essayist, poet and blogger, writing at the collision course of literary speculative fiction, Capitalocene ecosophies and radical politics. He tutors humanities and languages to high schoolers. His work has been published in New Contrast.

Niki Daly has won many awards for his work. His groundbreaking Not So Fast Songololo, winner of a US Parent’s Choice Award, paved the way for post-apartheid South African children’s books. Among his many books, Once Upon a Time was an Honor Winner in the US Children’s Africana Book Awards and Jamela’s Dress was chosen by the ALA as a Notable Children’s Book and by Booklist as one of the Top 10 African American Picture Books of 2000 - it also won both the Children’s Literature Choice Award and the Parents' Choice Silver Award. Niki lives with his wife, the author and illustrator Jude Daly, in South Africa.

Onke Mazibuko is a psychologist who has worked in different settings including private practice, corporate, non-government organisations, tertiary institutions and schools. Currently he works as the Director of Transformation, Diversity and Inclusion in an all-girls’ private school. Onke has two masters’ degrees, one in Counselling Psychology and the other in Public Health. Currently he is in his final year of a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Pretoria. He is a recipient of the Canon Collins Educational Trust Scholarship, as well as the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP – Public Health) granted by the US Department of State. He is also a Mawazo African Writers Institute Fellow. His debut novel, The Second Verse, was published by Penguin Random House in South Africa and longlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Awards and won in the Youth Literature category of the South African Literary Awards.

Peter Church is a South African fiction novelist renowned for the dark and racy nature of his writing. Church lives in Cape Town with his wife, the artist Paula Church, and three children. He is a member of SA’s PEN association of writers.

Peter Lindenfeld turned 100 years old in March 2025, editing and revising this book right up to his hundredth birthday. Retired from a storied academic career at Rutgers University, Peter lives with his partner in a retirement home only a few blocks from the house that was his home for many decades.

Philisiwe Twijnstra is a writer, director and actor. She lives in Durban where she founded Durban Women Playwrights in 2017. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Short Sharp Stories prize. Her plays have been performed at or won awards from the National Arts Festival, the Women’s Theatre Festival in Johannesburg, Zee Zee Theatre in Canada, among others. She was recipient for the 2018 CASA playwright award residency and a 2020 Distell Playwright Finalist. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Rhodes University.

Pieter de Poortere is reeds vir meer as twintig jaar die illustreerder-skrywer van die veelbekroonde Boerke-strokiesprente. Hy is gebore en woon in Gent, België. Sy werk is in verskeie tale in tydskrifte, koerante en boeke gepubliseer, en is te sien in die Belgiese Stripsentrum, ’n museum vir strokiesprente in Brussel. Pieter se aweregse karakter het ook sy eie reeks op Vlaamse televisie, op Prime en op die stasie Adult Swim in Frankryk gehad.

Polly Kronenberger is a novelist whose work explores the intersection of everyday life and humanity. Drawing inspiration from her years of work in a plethora of jobs, her stories often delve into the dilemmas of our increasingly connected world. When she's not writing, she enjoys the world around her, where she lives with her life partner and a menagerie of pets and farm animals in Camden, Ohio.

With degrees in art history and historic preservation, Rachel Hildebrandt worked as a historical consultant and academic editor before transitioning to literary translation. A recipient of several translation grants from both the Goethe Institut and the Austrian Ministry of Culture, she has published both fiction and nonfiction works in translation, including Herr Faustini Takes a Trip by Wolfgang Hermann (KBR Media), Collision by Merle Kroeger (Unnamed Press), Fade to Black by Zoe Beck (Weyward Sisters Press), and The Happiness Bureau by Andreas Izquierdo (Owl Canyon Press). Her translations have appeared in journals such as Europe Now, Anomaly and Trafika Europe. Rachel is also the founder of Weyward Sisters Publishing, which focuses on bringing contemporary works of crime and noir fiction by women authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland to English readers.

Rachel Zadok was born in Tel Aviv and raised in Johannesburg. She has a National Diploma in Fine Arts. In 2001, she escaped a career in advertising to become a writer, which she describes as being a little like running away to join the circus without the safety net. She is the author of two novels: Gem Squash Tokoloshe (2005), shortlisted for The Whitbread First Novel Award and The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the IMPAC Award; and Sister-Sister (2013), shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize and The Herman Charles Bosman Prize, and longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award. She lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter.

Raffaella Delle Donne has over fifteen years of experience in the animation industry developing and creating content for Disney, eOne, Wekids, Snipple Animation, Netflix, Baobab Studios and Triggerfish Animation Studios. She was the TV Development Executive for the Triggerfish Studios/Disney Storylab that incubated Mama K's Team 4 and co-wrote the award-winning features Adventures in Zambezia and Khumba. Raffaella is currently a writer and Executive Creative Consultant on Kiya and the Kimoja Heroes, a new preschool show slated for release on Disney.

Reneilwe Malatji was born in South Africa in 1968. She grew up in Turfloop township, in the northern part of South Africa, during the era of apartheid. Her father was an academic and her mother was a school teacher. Malatji trained as a teacher and worked as a subject specialist and advisor to provincial education departments. She recently completed a post-graduate diploma in Journalism and an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. She works as a lecturer at the University of Limpopo in South Africa and has an adult son. Love interrupted is her first book.

RICHARD CONYNGHAM is the author, creative director and researcher behind All Rise. He is a Pietermaritzburg-born writer who lives in Mexico City. After graduating from the universities of Cape Town and Cambridge, he worked for South African civil-society organizations Equal Education, The Bookery, and Ndifuna Ukwazi, the London publisher Slightly Foxed, and the edtech organization MakeTomorrow. In 2016, Richard collaborated with the Trantraal Brothers to create Safety, Justice and People’s Power, an illustrated companion to the O’Regan-Pikoli Commission of Inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha.

Rosemary Smith started working with the Black Sash in about 1967, first in the Advice Office and then holding various positions in the organisation, including being a Vice President. At the dissolution of the membership organisation, she was employed as Director of the Grahamstown Black Sash Advice Office for five years.  She is currently on a number of local boards and trusts and is chairperson of the Grahamstown Friends of the Library. She still lives in Grahamstown with her husband, Malvern van Wyk Smith, where they raised their four children.  Swimming with Cobras is her first book.

Sahra Noor is a writer, international health and philanthropy consultant, executive coach, and leadership development expert based in Nairobi, Kenya. Noor is the Founder and CEO of Grit Partners, a consulting firm that supports health system reform, capacity building, and leadership transformation across Africa and beyond.

Women out of Water is Sally Cranswick’s debut collection of short stories. She lives in Cape Town and is a writer and workshop facilitator with a special interest in life-writing and memoir. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT. Before coming to South Africa, Sally lived in many countries around the world and worked as a singer in the UK and Southeast Asia.

Salma Abdulatif Yusuf is a Kenyan-born award-winning civic leader and writer with a BA in Marine Management and an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) with distinction at the University of East Anglia as the 2021 recipient of the Global Voices Scholarship Award. She has been longlisted for the Griots Well Programme for BAME Writers and shortlisted for the Alpine Poetry Fellowship. Her collection “Grains of Paradise” was shortlisted by Broken Sleep Books in the UK. Her work has been published in Lolwe, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Arts against Extremism, Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Doek, Honey Badgers, Isele Magazine and elsewhere. She has performed her poetry at Toast Poetry UK in the Norwich Arts Center sharing the stage with Inua Ellams and Buddy Wakefields and at the Sainsbury Center where her work among others was broadcast live at BBC Look East. She participated in poetry/writing workshopping at the University of Nebraska facilitated by Kwame Dawes as a Mandela Washington Fellow. Her storytelling and leadership skills landed her the opportunity to serve as a Youth Media Zone Expert for the World Export Development Forum at the African Union. She received the Coast Women Magazine’s Woman Award of the Year and was selected as one of the 100 most influential Muslims in Kenya in 2019.

Against the backdrop of complicated, beautiful South Africa in the 1960s, an epic family saga unfolds.

Eve Hunter has grown up on her family's dairy farm in the Lowveld, but she's inherited more than just a love of the land—she's inherited their sorrow. When her father is electrocuted while building a barn, the tragedy exposes the dark secret that has run beneath her family's sadness for years. Eve turns to Jack, her closest friend and neighbor, for comfort.

But Jack belongs to Kate, her older sister, at least that's what their families have always assumed. As Eve and Jack's bond deepens into something more charged, Eve faces an impossible choice to either honor her family’s expectations or to follow her heart and risk everything.

Then Kate comes to her with a devastating request that could change everything between them.

The Light Remains is a story about the weight of family loyalty, the price of independence, and the choices that define us when duty and desire collide.

In this collection, Sawad Hussain translated Najwa Binshatwan's chapter into English. Hussain is an award-winning Arabic-English literary translator. She co-teaches a workshop on translating Arabic comics at UK secondary schools via the collective Shadow Heroes. Her most recent translation is the Palestinian resistance novella Passage to the Plaza by Sahar Khalifeh (shortlisted for the 2020 Palestine Book Awards). She holds an MA in Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and is passionate about bringing narratives written in Arabic from the African continent to wider audiences.

Shakira Maharaj is a debut children’s book author from South Africa. She lives in Cape Town with her young son, tired husband and chubby dog. She has a Master’s Degree from the University of Cape Town, and when she’s not writing or mothering, she works for an NGO focused on early childhood development.

Sifiso Mzobe was born and raised in the Durban township of Umlazi, where he still resides. He attended St Francis College in Mariannhill, then studied Journalism at Durban’s Damelin Business Campus, receiving a distinction in Practical Journalism. Young Blood is his debut novel and won a number of awards, including the 2011 Herman Charles Bosman Award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the South African Literary Award for a First-Time Published Author, and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. His second book, Searching for Simphiwe (Kwela Books, 2020), is a collection of stories centered on the Umlazi township released earlier this year to positive reviews. Mzobe currently works for a community newspaper as a journalist. Catalyst Press’ release of Young Blood is Mzobe’s North American debut.

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is a Windham Campbell Prize winning (2022) writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, as well as master's degrees in African Studies and Film. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. Born in Zimbabwe, she worked as a teacher in Johannesburg before returning to Zimbabwe. The Theory of Flight is her first novel and won the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize in South Africa.

Sola Njoku is a freelance writer and editor, children’s author and mum of two living in Berkshire, England. Sola is currently researching Yoruba culture and Anglophone African Literature and is due to begin a doctorate programme in African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. She has been engaged in literary and arts journalism for over a decade, and has worked with BBC Africa, The Caine Prize and Granta. Her writing has been featured in Wasafiri, Next Newspapers, The Guardian, The Punch and many other Nigerian publications. She has recently published Moyo ati Kayin Books, a series of bilingual children’s books in three Nigerian Languages in a bid to promote early multilingualism and create an avenue for children to develop simultaneously a love of languages and literature. She continues to work on more adult and children’s writing. Follow her @yorubamama and @readerinafricanliterature

Stephanie Ebert lives in South Africa with her three children. She spent her South African childhood writing stories and climbing avocado trees, before going to university in the USA to study English Literature. When she is not writing her own stories, she enjoys working with her local community to see more South African stories come to life. She is the editor of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, annotated for teen and middle grade readers (Owl’s Nest, 2024) and co-author of How to Stop a Train: The Story of How Mohandas Gandhi became the Mahatma with Kathryn Pillay (Pan Macmillan, 2024). More information about her writing for adults and children is found at Stephebert.com

SVEN AXELRAD was born in New Zealand to a French-speaking British father and a South African mother. An accountant who reads 65 books a year, plays the guitar, and is covered in tattoos, Axelrad lives in Durban, South Africa.

Tej Rae is an award-winning writer and former English teacher based in Lusaka. Since 1999, she has lived in Zambia, Senegal, the UAE, Italy, and Ethiopia with her husband and two children. Her bilingual children's book Sirens, set in Addis Ababa, came out in 2021. It led to a feature on BBC Amharic the following year. A second Amharic-English children's book, Spaced, followed. Her action-adventure film script, Abyssinia Steel, has won three awards. In 2025, she published Tigerfish, an illustrated middle grade chapter book set in Zambia. It became the number one bestseller at two Exclusive Books outlets in South Africa that summer.
These days, Tej is growing Lusaka's literary scene through LIT LSK. She runs writing workshops and pop-up book events featuring Catalyst and Modjaji titles. She's also completing an MFA at the University of Cape Town. Salaula Sisters is her debut novel.

Thierry Bellefroid works for the Belgian television company, RTB.  He has published three novels, a collection of short stories and a digital novel. Amongst many things, he has been a member of numerous comics juries; he has been a member of Groupe d’Experts sur la Bande Dessinée pour la Communauté Française de Belgique since its creation in 2001 and a commissioner for the Commission for Aid to Comics of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation of Belgium until 2015; he coordinated comic strip animations for eight years for the Brussels Book Fair; and has participated in the catalogs of many comics exhibitions.

Illustrator: Baruti Kandolo Lilela, better known by his pen name Barly Baruti, is a renowned Congolese cartoonist.  He has been described by the BBC as “the Congolese author best known outside his country.” Baruti is the co-founder of the Atelier de Création et de l’Initiation à l’Art Creative Workshop for an Initiation to Art) to encourage talented youth in Kinshasa, and he is responsible for organizing the first Afro BD show in Kinshasa in the effort to promote African comics.  He currently lives in Kinshasa. In 2023, Barly was named Facilitator of Partnerships and Cultural Relations in Europe by the Congolese Ministry of Culture.

Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger has translated over 60 comics and graphic novels, including several highly acclaimed titles such as Climate Changed, Blue is the Warmest Color, Madame Livingstone (a 2021 New York Times Globetrotting title) and Catherine’s War, which won her the Silver 2021 Batchelder Award.  She has lived in Europe since 1983, primarily in France and Germany but with several short stays in other European nations, and presently lives in London.

TRACEY FARREN’s first novel, Whiplash, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Award. She received a SAFTA nomination for her screenplay of Whiplash, which became the film Tess, and went on to win several awards. Her Snake screenplay has been produced as a movie, released in 2024. Her third novel, The Book of Malachi, received rave international reviews. She lives near Cape Point, South Africa with her human and animal family.

Trevor R. Getz is a Professor of African and World History at San Francisco State University. He is the author or co-author of eleven volumes, including Abina and the Important Men, which won the 2014 James Harvey Robinson Prize. Trevor has also written and produced a number of documentaries and historical films which have garnered festival prizes, and has held Visiting Professorships at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. He is the recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2020 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award.

Tsitsi Mapepa is a writer known for her poetry, short stories, and novels. She studied at Manukau Institute of Technology and earned a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. Her debut novel is titled Ndima Ndima.

Victor Forna has a degree in Civil Engineering from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, with a special interest in Environmental Engineering.

Viktorija Butautis is an award-winning Lithuanian author now based in Melbourne. With five fiction books published in Lithuania and Malaysia, she brings her bold, vibrant imagination to a new series of thrilling, all-connected-puzzle novels for young teens. Her mission? To spark curiosity, challenge young minds, and sneak in a little learning while crafting adventure-packed stories you can't put down. When not writing, she's likely traveling the globe, solving a new puzzle, or spiking a ball on the beach volleyball court.

Willem Samuel is a visual artist working in animation and comic books. His autobiographical novel, Mengelmoes, was published in the UK by Soaring Penguin Press in 2016 to critical acclaim. His comic work has featured in zines internationally, including the cult series Bitterkomix and in cyberspace via the award-winning online anthology Aces Weekly, brainchild of David Lloyd (V for Vendetta). Previously, Willem Art Directed the pan-African comic Supa Strikas, which was adapted into an animated series. More recently he served as Head of Story on the animated feature Seal Team as well as creating concept art for the Warhammer+ streaming series, Hammer & Bolter.

Yefon Isabelle is a Cameroonian writer, jurist, feminist and determinist. She has authored a number of books and numerous works of poetry. She resides in the North West Region of Cameroon.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel Bom Boy was published in South Africa by Modjaji Books in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016), Omotoso's second novel, was published to critical acclaim. She lives in Johannesburg.

Yovanka Paquete Perdigão is a Bissau-Guinean writer. Born in Lisbon, Yovanka grew up in Guinea-Bissau until the age of six when a civil war forced her to relocate to Lisbon. She has since lived in Abidjan, Dakar, the UK and Ireland.⁠Yovanka’s writing has been deeply inspired by her early experiences of conflict. When she returned to Guinea-Bissau after more than twenty years, she became interested in researching Portuguese colonial legacies in Lusophone Africa, discovering the impact across oceans and in her own family. Yovanka has since worked to champion Lusophone African stories as an editor, and translator at Dedalus Books, and formerly as a podcaster on the Not Another Book Podcast.⁠ Yovanka’s writing has been featured in several platforms such as the Johannesburg Review of Books and AFREADA, and shortlisted for Penguin 2016 WriteNow, The Spread the Word’s City of Stories competition and the Miles Morland 2018/19 scholarship. In 2021, she was selected as one of the 100 most influential people from the Portuguese-speaking world. Follow her @postcolonialchild

Zanta Nkumane is a writer, journalist and ex-scientist from Eswatini. His work has appeared on Okay Africa, ThisIsAfrica, Mail & Guardian, Racebaitr, Kalahari Review, City Press, Arts 24,⁠
New Frame, Amaka Studio, Doek, Lolwe, Olongo Africa, The Republic & The New York Times. He contributed essays to queer anthologies We’re F**king Here (2021) and Touch: Sex,⁠ Sexuality and Sensuality (2021). Zanta is the non-fiction editor at Doek! Follow Zanta @Zanta_Nk ⁠