Sweet Briar College’s International Writers Series continues with South African novelist and playwright Zakes Mda. Mda will lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 12 and read from his work on Thursday, Nov. 13. Both events begin at 8 p.m. in Memorial Chapel and admission is free.
Zakes Mda will be at Sweet Briar Nov. 12 and 13. Photo by Sal Idriss.Mda is author of the novels “The Heart of Redness,” “She Plays with the Darkness,” “Ways of Dying,” “The Madonna of Excelsior,” “The Whale Caller” and his “Cion.” His plays, which were banned by South African government sensors in the segregationist 1990s, include “We Shall Sing for the Fatherland,” “Dark Voices Ring” and “Dead End.”
He received a Zora Neal Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award in 2003 and is a professor of creative writing at Ohio University.
John Gregory Brown, director of Sweet Briar’s creative writing program, is using Mda’s latest novel, “Cion,” as required reading for his classes this fall. “He’s one of South Africa’s most distinguished writers,” Brown said. “He began as a playwright and he’s written both about apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.
“For the first time in … ‘Cion’ he writes about this country as well. The character from his first novel, ‘Ways of Dying,’ returns in this new novel. It’s about Africa and America and the Underground Railroad. It’s funny. It’s a wonderful book. He’s a wonderful writer.”
For more information, contact Brown at
brown@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6434 or visit the International Writers Series
Web site. Also, books by authors featured in the series are available at the Sweet Briar College Book Shop.
The next event in the writers series will feature Chinese poet Zhang Er on Feb. 11 and 12, 2009.
— By
Suzanne Ramsey,
SBC staff writer
