MoAfrika ''a Mokgathi is a poet, stage actress, playwright, saxophonist/ flautist (sometimes), award-winning radio presenter/producer, facilitator, businesswoman, event organizer . and she has many more skills in her talent hat. MoAfrika is known for her Sepedi pen and her reciting style using code switching and code mixing of the English and Sepedi languages fused with jazzy/soul/Kiba vocals and rhythm. Some of her works have been published on online platforms. Recordings include ''Ndozakuswa'' 2014, Nduduzo Makhathini''s album, Sketches of Tomorrow, and Tribe Soil''s EP (2011). Ayanda Billie is a social critic, freelance writer and poet who published a poetry anthology in 2006, Avenues of my Soul . He says, ''In my poetry, I''m trying to bring life to the heartbeat of my culture, the joys of myself and deep-seated grief, and to find the brightness of hope on the faces of the children running on our streets and the strides made by their mothers. Also to be the voice to the confused factory workers in the chaos of the new dispensation.
'' Billie was born and bred in Uitenhage in the township of KwaNobuhle where he still lives. Currently, he is working at Volkswagen SA as an operator. He has recently completed the Masters in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. Gary Cummiskey lives in Johannesburg. He is the former editor of Dye Hard Press, which he started in 1994. He is the author of several poetry chapbooks, the most recent being Don''t Stop Until Incinerated (Tearoom Books, Stockholm, 2016), I Remain Indoors (Tearoom Books, 2013) and Sky Dreaming (Graffiti Kolkata, India, 2011). In 2009, he published Who was Sinclair Beiles? , a collection of writings about the South African Beat poet co-edited with Eva Kowalska. An expanded edition appeared in 2014.
His collection of short fiction, Off-ramp , was a finalist for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2014. Dr Raphael d''Abdon was born in Italy and moved to South Africa in 2008. In 2013, he edited the collection Marikana . A Moment in Time published his debut poetry collection Sunnyside Nightwalk , and was featured at Durban''s Poetry Africa. His second collection, Salt Water , was launched in 2016. He teaches South African Spoken Word poetry at Unisa. Sedica Davids believes the world is indeed round with wide-open spaces for the imagination. She believes that the life energy contained in each body is powerful beyond imagination.
Justice drives her. Truth infuses her, and harmony is usually a breath away. Sedica believes that courageous action is buoyed by engaging with the spaces in between, the notes one feels when the silence appears. To her, poetry is frugality steeped in pungence - to smell, experience, and picture the poem. She is inspired by the courage and conviction of such revolutionary women as Poolan Devi and Rosa Luxembourg, and many more. Writer-performer Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is the author of two collections of poetry and co-editor of No Serenity Here: An Anthology of African Poetry , which was translated into Mandarin. In 2014, she was the Commonwealth Poet. Original Skin , her autobiographical play, toured South Africa and Germany between 2008-2012.
Since 2007, she has read at poetry festivals in Germany, Denmark, UK, Cuba, Sweden, Zimbabwe, and Ghana. She won the 2010 SALA award for poetry and the 2009 Writing Beyond the Fringe Award for her short story, The Day That Jesus Dropped the Ball . She lectures Creative Writing at Wits University. Diana Ferrus is a writer, poet, storyteller, and performer. She writes in both English and Afrikaans and has published two anthologies, one in Afrikaans ( Ons Komvandaan ); one in English ( I''ve come to take you home ). Diana is well-known for the role that her poem ''I''ve come to take you home'' played in securing the return of the remains of Sarah Baartman, a Khoisan woman who was paraded in Europe and whose remains were displayed in the Musee de L''Homme in Paris.