Farewell to the Rainbow Nation?

Oscar Hemer is Professor of Journalistic and Literary Creation at Malmö University. An established author and editor with a background in arts journalism, Hemer’s diverse body of work ranges from fiction to academic writing to experimental literary anthropology. He is also the co-editor and translator of the collected works of Jorge Luis Borges into Swedish. He founded the Masters programme in Communication for Development at Malmö, and he is a member of the Rethinking Democracy (REDEM) research platform.

Bronwyn Law-Viljoen is a writer, editor, publisher and Associate Professor and Head of Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is the editor and co-founder of Fourthwall Books, and a former editor of Art South Africa magazine. She received her doctorate in literature at New York University as a Fulbright scholar in 2003, and her doctorate in creative writing from Wits in 2017. Her first novel, The Printmaker, won the Olive Schreiner Prize from the English Academy of South Africa, and her second novel is forthcoming.

Masande Ntshanga is a novelist, short story writer, poet, editor and publisher. He is the author of two novels, The Reactive (2014) and Triangulum (2019). His most recent publication is an experimental collection of poetry and prose called Native Life in the Third Millennium (2020). He lectures in Creative Writing at Rhodes University, edits the literary journal New Contrast, and runs an experimental press called Model See Media. He is the winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award, a Betty Trask Award, a Fulbright Award, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and a Bundanon Trust Award.

Ivan Vladislavić is an author, editor and Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Department at Wits University. His books include the novels The Restless Supermarket, The Exploded View, Double Negative, andThe Distance, and the story collections 101 Detectives and Flashback Hotel. He has also edited books on architecture and art, and often collaborates with artists and photographers. TJ/Double Negative, a joint project with photographer David Goldblatt, received the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz Award for best photography book. His work has also won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award, the University of Johannesburg Prize and Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction.