We are excited to announce the chosen candidates for this year’s PEN it Down writing residency, presented by the Jakes Gerwel Foundation, PEN Afrikaans, and PEN South Africa.
A’Eysha Kassiem, who holds an MA in Journalism and is based in Cape Town, is an award-winning writer and editor. She has worked as a journalist for almost two decades and has managed some of the biggest newsrooms in South Africa, including those of the Cape Times and News24. Her debut novel, Suitcase of Memory, was the joint winner of the University of Johannesburg’s Debut Prize in 2022, and also won the Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose in 2024. Kassiem has received several prestigious scholarships, including the International Journalists’ Programme based in Germany and the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, which recognises leaders in their respective fields
David Mann is a writer, editor and art critic from Johannesburg. His short fiction, which draws from the undercurrents of the South African art world, has appeared in various localand international journals. He also co-edited the short story anthology POWER (Tattoo Press, 2025) and Makers & Shapers of Media: The School of Journalism & Media Studies at 50 (Jacana). His short story collection, Once Removed,was published in 2024. That same year, it was awarded the Thomas Pringle Short Story Prize for the story ‘Meaningful Contributions’, and shortlisted by the NIHSS Awards and the Nadine Gordimer Award for best short story collection. Mann is also a multi-award-winning art critic.
Jan van Tonder obtained a BA degree in Afrikaans, Psychology and Criminology from the University of Pretoria and later worked as a journalist for newspapers and the SABC. He occasionally resigned to work on a book in the Little Karoo. Once the book was written, he would return to his work as a journalist to earn enough money for his next sojourn. Van Tonder’s work has received several nominations, including for the Hertzog Prize for Die verevrou and Grootgeluk. His book Die kind has been widely prescribed. Roepman was translated into English and Flemish, with the film version being directed by Paul Eilers. Van Tonder has also produced two radio dramas and two stage plays. In 2007, he won a Sanlam Theatre Award for Playwright of the Year for the play Lewensreg.
Rezina Habtemariamis a writer and researcher examining global Black poetics and the materiality of technology. Currently, her work traces Tigrinya poetic form to reveal histories of Eritrean place-making across time and through the ongoingness of rupture, creating one of the most diasporic countries in the world. Her work is informed by her family’s history of migration and what remains, and an interdisciplinary training in Cultural Studies (MA). Currently, Habtemariam is the managing editor of Logic(s) magazine, the project manager of the African Poetry Digital Portal, and a visiting scholar at the University of Washington.
Unathi Slasha, a novelist, poet and literary scholar from Despatch in the Eastern Cape, holds an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. His work is known to reimagine and subvert isiXhosa folklore to write the ‘Unlanguaged World’ – a term he coined to describe those lived moments and images in Black township life that are resistant to the inherited and limited literary language. He is the author of Jah Hills (Black Ghost Books, 2017; CLASH Books, 2019), which was nominated for the 2019 NOMMO Award for African Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is also the author of Much with the Dead & Mum with the Dying, or: Rigidities of Rationalism, Camaraderie Criticism & Contemporary South African Literature. Slasha is the winner of the 2025 Iskanchi Book Prize for his manuscript The Hollow Sound of Lightweight Bodies, which will be published by Iskanchi Press later in 2026.
Yang Xueting is a Chinese-born comics artist and author based in Oslo, Norway. Her work explores nature, memory and belonging through a quiet and poetic visual language. In books such as Et annet sted, Kjøkken and Tenner, she portrays everyday moments with sensitivity and subtle touches of magical realism. She is known for her emotional depth, atmospheric storytelling and refined visual style. Her work has received notable recognition in Norway, including awards from the Ministry of Culture, and accolades in national book design from Årets vakreste bøker and the comics competition Årets tegneserie.
Congratulations to the writers! We hope the uninterrupted writing time in our home of stories, Paulet House in KwaNojoli, in the company of other writers from near and far, will be enriching. We look forward to following your writing journey!
