Zakes Mda

Novelist, playwright, painter, music composer. South African, resident in the USA. Creative writing professor at Ohio University. Seven novels of literary fiction set in South Africa (have won all the major literary awards in South Africa, and also the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award, and the American Library Association Notable Books in the USA) and one set in the USA (shortlisted for the NAACP Image Award). Most recent book: Our Lady of Benoni, a play published by Wits University Press, Johannesburg, with Introduction by Sarah Roberts. Sometimes There is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Forthcoming from Seagull Books, India, and Vivlia Books South Africa: The Sculptors of Mapungubwe (a novel).