Short.Sharp.Stories is a platform showcasing top and emerging South African fiction writers. The theme of this year’s anthology is Fluid – freedom to be. Fluid, this year’s Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, seeks to engage fictional expression around identity, culture and society.
Joanne Hichens conducts interviews with the respective short story writers.
Mini-interview with Yuwinn Kraukamp, author of the short story “iHeart you now and always”, featured in the 2023 Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, Fluid
Yuwinn Kraukamp, a former literature and linguistics student from the University of the Western Cape, is an aspiring writer from Bredasdorp. He’s an autodidact, a bilingual book-lover and a natural-born creative whose multidimensional writing talents range from radio dramas to short stories, freelance journalism and more. He’s a lifelong student and fan of all forms of art, and a firm believer in the beauty, magic and eternalness of the written word. He writes of his story, “iHeart you now and always”:
“I wanted to write about critical social issues, but in a light and humorous way that could effortlessly flow from page to page, without feeling like a sociopolitical analysis. So, I created a perfectly imperfect protagonist: an overly idealistic avatar of a dating app, who’s circumstantially forced to question his reality, his sexual settings and his humanity.”
Read here:
Yuwinn A. Kraukamp is a bilingual writer from the coastal corner of Cape Agulhas, South-Africa. He’s a natural born creative, a former English— and Communications major at the university of the Western Cape, and a patron (saint) of everything that’s artistically unique and beautifully weird in this world. Yuwinn has worked as a freelance columnist for Network 24, and a freelance journalist for The Southern Post Newspaper since 2022. In 2024 he was the third-place winner of the Diana Ferrus poetry prize; and in April 2026 he was the first-place prize winner of the Njabulo S. Ndebele-themed ‘Rediscovering the Ordinary’ poetry competition. His poem Raw/Rou won the third-place prize at the Bridgette James international contest in May 2026. Both his English and Afrikaans poetry has appeared on various platforms such as Litnet, PEN Afrikaans and Versindaba; and has been published within poetry anthologies such as Ons Kom Van Hier and The Avbob Poetry Project.
He became a member of the Jakes Gerwel Foundation’s network of authors and artists, after participating in a writing fellowship in the Eastern Cape in October 2022. In that same year, he was shortlisted for the Nigerian short story contest—Toyin Falola—and became one of two South-Africans whose writing was honorably mentioned at The Future Feminist Awards in California. Yuwinn’s writing focuses on language identity, political transitions, moral complexity, loss, trauma and rebirth. A variety of his short stories have been published in magazines such as Huisgenoot and Kuier, and within collections such as the Short-Sharp-Stories anthology and FicSci. In 2024, Yuwinn was part of a science-meets-creativity workshop hosted by the University of Stellenbosch and the South-African Research Chair; where he produced climate-change fiction that was published in an oceanic-research anthology in June 2025. In September and October 2025, he participated in a writing residency alongside six African writers at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study (J.I.A.S), where they explored the political roles and responsibilities of poetry and short stories.
You can contact Yuwinn at yuwinnkraukamp@gmail.com regarding potential writing opportunities or projects.
