Biographies of the 2024 participants
Hannah Mileman
Hannah Mileman is a Norwegian writer and illustrator who studied at Kingston University in London and is currently based in Oslo. She made her debut in 2020 as an author of historical fiction with her first book in the Gjenklang series and in 2021 as a writer of storybooks for children when she started with her Vesle series. The most recent Veslestorybook has been nominated for the Norwegian Ministry of Culture’s picture book award in 2024. Apart from these book projects, she has worked as an educational writer of school textbooks, for online teaching platforms and encyclopaedias and presented lectures about writing and literature for children and adults. She has already published 15 books and is currently working on a young adult novel. Her aspiration is to publish a work of fiction in English in order to reach a wider audience.
Lindiwe Nkutha
Lindiwe Nkutha describes herself as a cultural activist, author, documentary filmmaker and a reluctant poet who was born in Soweto and now lives in Johannesburg. Her stories have been published in several journals and anthologies, including 180 degrees: New fiction by South African women writers (2005), African Road: New Writing from Southern Africa (2006) that was selected for the PEN award by J.M. Coetzee and Recognition: An anthology of South African short stories (2017). Her stand-alone collection of short stories 69 Jerusalem Street (2021) was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg’s debut book prize in 2021 and for the short story prize of the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2022.
Lindiwe’s poetry has appeared in the literary journal Botsotso, in Art for Humanity Chimurenga and in the electronic newsletter Pambazuka News. Her documentary Jo’burg Rising (2007) was included in the Encounters film festival in Johannesburg and was also screened internationally.
Lindiwe received the Pan Macmillan Chris van Wyk bursary for creative writing in 2018 and she was selected for a fellowship programme of the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity in 2021.
Willem Anker
Willem Anker is an acclaimed Afrikaans writer and playwright. He is the author of three novels: Siegfried (2007), Buys (2014) and Skepsel (2020), and six plays: Skroothonde (2004), Slaghuis (2006), Sakrament (2009), Skrapnel (2009), Samsa-masjien (2014) and Patmos (2024). He translated five plays for Afrikaans theatre productions, including works of Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett, and in 2023 he adapted Han Kang’s International Booker Prize winning novel The Vegetarian for an Afrikaans stage production. His novel Buys was awarded the Hertzog Prize for Prose in 2016 and its English translation Red Dog was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. He holds the chair in Afrikaans creative writing in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at Stellenbosch University.
Kwassi Logos
Kwassi Logos, also known as Belizem on the internet, is an author, interpreter, blogger and columnist from Togo. As an Afro-pragmatist with years of experience in the mining industry, Kwassi Logos is very aware of the challenges that prevent the African continent from properly taking off and playing its part in the globalisation of our lives on all levels, especially where literature and the expression of new ideas are concerned. He joined PEN Togo in February 2022 to make his contribution to the association’s vision of ‘bringing together writers of all persuasions committed to the values of peace, tolerance and freedom, without which creation would be impossible’.
Keith Oliver Lewis
Keith Oliver Lewis is an award-winning poet and writer from Smartie Town in Paarl. He has been published in Yesterdays and Imagining Realities, in Fluid: The Freedom to be, the New Contrast Literary Magazine and elsewhere. His work has been longlisted for the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award and his short story Blue Boy Lagoonearned him the 2023 Short Sharp Stories Prize. Lewis was a writing fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study (2023) and has performed on the Poetry Africa Festival stage, appeared in the Expresso Morning Show and had performances at various other poetry festivals. Lewis’s most recent accolade and highlight in his career was receiving the 2023 New Contrast National Poetry Prize.
Anzil Kulsen
Anzil Kulsen is a widely published author from Upington in the Northern Cape. Her shorter works include daily devotions for Carpe Diem Media, numerous articles and columns for magazines, online journals and newspapers as well as more than twenty short stories for various magazines, such as Kuier, Vrouekeur and Rooi Rose, and also publishers, such as LAPA and MML. Her longer works include the popular Karatekas series, Zita (2006), Sorrie maak nie gesond nie (2015), Skarlakenkinders (2019) with Nadine Blom as co-author, Reënboogmelodie (2020) and Ragab (2023). When she is not busy with her own writing, she works as a project organiser and facilitator of workshops in creative writing for the ATKV.
