Deborah Seddon

Deborah Seddon was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literary Studies in English at Rhodes University. Her poetry has been published in various journals, locally and abroad, including Ons Klyntji, Botsotso, the Sol Plaatje European Union Anthology, the AvBob Poetry Project, the Badilisha Poetry X-Change Archive of Pan-African poets, the Gerald Kraak Anthology, and Sinister Wisdom. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Award and the New Contrast National Poetry Prize.  Her debut poetry collection, Magnitude, will be published by Dryad Press in October 2025.

Host: Stuart Payne

Zoom Room: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/89955065083...

Meeting ID: 899 5506 5083

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Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk serves the National Writers' Association of South Africa, New Contrast, Off the Wall, and convenes the Lansdowne Local Writers' Workshop.  

     His first poetry collection was Emergency Poems. He was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver because these anti-apartheid poems "draw critical attention to oppressive and unjust laws through performative political poetry. His work provided strength and motivated many people to fight for liberation."

     His latest poetry collection is Cosmonauts do it in Heaven, an irreverent take on astronomy and spaceflight. He shows that both classical icons like the moon and stars, and also spacecraft, can serve as metaphors for romance and tragedy.

Host: Stuart Payne

Zoom Room: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/89955065083...

Meeting ID: 899 5506 5083

Passcode: 4ucS3b

Marcelle Olivier

Marcelle Olivier is a writer and academic from Cambridge. She is a Commonwealth Scholar and holds a doctorate from Oxford University; her research explores overlaps between gender, art, society, and evolution. She has taught at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, worked in HE development, and is currently with Anglia Ruskin University. Marcelle has published and translated widely in the UK and South Africa, and her translations of contemporary Afrikaans poetry appear in In A Burning Sea (Protea, 2014). Her own poetry is thematically linked - often oppositionally, and through theory - to gendered power, myth, science, and landscape. 

Host: Julia Smuts Louw

Zoom Room: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/89955065083...

Meeting ID: 899 5506 5083

Passcode: 4ucS3b