'Growing up in Ziyabuya township, Nomandla battles poverty, racism, and her own mental health.' Braids & Migraines is a debut novel that tells Nomandla's story, but author Andile Cele knows exactly what she's talking about. Hear her as Guest Author of the Month in conversation with Maryam Adams.
British writer, playwright and champion of women's writing, Kate Mosse is a prolific author and co-founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction. She's well known for her historical fiction, not least the Joubert Family Chronicles which have brought her back to Franschhoek many times. Following this years Literary Festival in that town, Beryl Eichenberger spoke to her at The Women's Library at Artscape .
'You are what you eat', so the saying goes. But how does food affect your health and wellbeing? For Zambian-born Dietician, Performance Nutritionist and author of Food for Menopause Dr Linda Patel , food has been life changing. Join her here for the journey.
While there's a serious side to Juliette's own story, the humour in her book If The Dead Could Talk ( Kwela ), and in her interview with Beryl Eichenberger at The Women's Library at Artscape , is irrepressible! Join this new princess of 'cosy crime' as she sets the scene.
With ten published novels to her name, a radio book show and an online Book Club with 23,000 members, Paige Nick is the quintessential book person. Unsurprising then her latest title is called Book People ( Pan Macmillan ). At the Woman Zone Book Club, she spoke to Beryl Eichenberger, about its origins, as well as her own.
For a change we heard a story, not from an author this time, but from an actor. Erika Breytenbach came along to The Women’s Library at Artscape, to talk about the one-woman play I Can Buy Myself Flowers that tracks the all-too-familiar, tragi-comic lives of six city women. Written by Mike van Graan , and co-produced with Unlikely Productions, it's opening March 28 2025 at The Wave in Cape Town - with a countrywide run ahead.
Included in the many important social messages internationally- acclaimed artist Sue Williamson shares in her 50 year retrospective exhibition at the Iziko National Gallery , are the voices of women calling for, amongst other things, Peace.
Sharing her stories and baring her soul, former international supermodel and photographer Josie Borain was recently at The Alma Cafe in Rosebank, in conversation with Nancy Richards of Woman Zone.
Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey, much awarded and sometimes known as the Grande Dame of Archaeology, was remarkable. Not just for her fossilsed discoveries back in the 1950’s-70’s of skulls and tools dating back 200 million years, but for the extraordinary life she led – moving from Londonto East Africa. She was also the wife of paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, and co-founder of The Leakey Foundation , but in Follow Me To Africa – its Mary’s own story that Penny Haw de Vos tells....
The Namib is said to be one of the oldest and most hostile deserts in the world. And with temperatures rising over 50o, it seems like the last place on earth you'd want to be, never mind run. But for Kim Sonntag, the Beyond the Ultimate Desert Ultramarathon was 'a challenge' - listen to how she found it, and conquered it.
Just prior to the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender based Violence, Woman Zone joined forces with the Cape Town Interfaith Initiative and Artscape to host a discussion asking How Faith and Spirituality Can Work against GBV. Here we get just a a taste of a very big conversation.
I Will Not Be Silenced (Tafelberg), the defiant title of legal journalist Karyn Maughan's new book, speaks volumes. About the damaging motivation behind the private prosecution brought against her by former president Jacob Zuma, and about the woman herself.
Daily Maverick journalist Caryn Dolley is not only an award-winner, but, with four published non-fiction books to her name, she’s also extremely prolific. With the release of her latest title: Man Alone: Mandela’s Top Cop – Exposing South Africa’s Ceaseless Sabotage, she was the Woman Zone Book Club guest author of the month. She spoke to, and was introduced by fellow journalist Theresa Smith....
Afrikaaps has been evolving as a language in the Western Cape for centuries. But it is so much more than just a means of communication, as Paarl writer Gaireyah Fredericks shows in her Afrikaaps book - Een Voet innie Kabr (One foot in the Grave). A collection of twenty one short stories, it features some very colourful characters - as Gaireyah explained to WZ Board chair Celeste Matthews Wannenburgh at the October meeting of the WZ Book Club
Not technically a WZ Book Club guest author of the month, London based author LOUISA TREGER was in Cape Town recently to launch her new novel The Paris Muse . It tells the story of the turbulent love affair between artist and photographer Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso - a passionate story told with compassion.
It's not often we have a poet as a WZBC Guest Author of the Month - even less often that we have a geographer. So to have geographer and poet Shari Daya come to talk to us about Land | Lines, her debut anthology published by Karavan Press was a double bonus.
Botswana born GOTHATAONE MOENG, although a writer, was not technically a Woman Zone Book Club Guest Author of the Month, but as a speaker at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town, and with a recently published collection of short stories, Call and Response had many a personal story of her own to tell, not least what its like for a young person in Botswana growing up between tradition and modernity.
In the last of the DAISY TALK-workshops for 2024, actor and teacher CELESTE MATTHEWS WANNENBURGH, Woman Zone's very valued Board Chair, shared with the girls from the ISeeU mentoring programme thoughts on how to Figure Out Your Future, while giving us some insight into her own past - and present. Take a listen here...
We first heard Thobeka Yose's story back in 2016 when she shared it at Woman Zone. Eight years later, she has finally had it published in a book called In Silence My Heart Speaks ( Karavan Press ). With all the issues that it touches on, mothers, marriage, mental health, abuse, cultural behaviours and beliefs, as well as gender diversity - it was an appropriate book for us to launch during the Artscape Women's Humanity Festival....
The Knit & Natter movement, a part of Woman Zone's Everywoman Project, is just growing! And this year in honour of Artscape's Women's Humanity Festival 2024, they dressed the iconic 2m high statue as Wild Woolly Wire Woman and turned their hands to Knitting for Kindness. With love.
Every year on August 9th, Artscape comes alive to the sound of many hundreds of women celebrating Women's Day. But to share the stories of some very special also women more widely, every year WOMAN ZONE put together a special Women's Day radio show, presented by Theresa Smith, produced by Beryl Eichenberger and broadcast on Fine Music Radio . Take a listen!
‘How can YOU make a difference?’ was the question asked at Artscape ’s Women’s Humanity Festival this year with an invitation to sign the #STEP-UP for CHANGE pledge against Gender Based Violence. Activist PHARIE SEFALI, founder of the Lulibo Project, has found a way through writing AKHONA’s JOURNEY, a simple, insightful book and short 7-part film animated by Greenhouse and produced in partnership with ACT Ubumbano . Contact her on luliboprojects2015@gmail.com and listen to her story here......
That Gender Based Violence is an escalating crime the world over is a shocking reflection on humanity. Responding to it as a means of highlighting and addressing it is an international theatre project involving three playwrights from South Africa, Iran and the USA. It's scheduled to be performed in South Africa in 2025, but at a reading recently at Artscape , we listened in to find out more, and see how we could all be involved.
Not everyone wants to write a whole, full-on book, but in this Daisy Talk, writer-theatrical ANNIE AKINYI KAMYA tells the ISeeU girls how writing for her became a way of life. She went on to explain how, very simply, they can write their own story.
An Uncomfortable Paradise: A History of Dispossession and Slavery in Simon's Town is a book Joline Young based on her Master's Degree in historical studies. As Woman Zone guest author of the month and interviewed by Theresa Smith, she shared the emotional journey involved in writing this book.
In it's 17th year, the upcoming Women's Humanity Festival at Artscape takes one step further in the war against Gender Based Violence, inviting YOU to sign the pledge to #STEP-UP FOR CHANGE!
One thing we all have in common, at any age, is stress. But for young people in particular it can be really hard, both to recognise and to manage. At the Artscape Resource Centre, psychologist, narrative therapist, couples counsellor - and member of the Woman Zone executive committee - DAPHNE COOPER gave this Stress-Less talk-workshop for the young women from ISeeU , but first she talked us through the different aspects of the profession and how she got into it herself....
In her career as Head of Training and Development at the Chrysalis Academy , Janine Turner has learnt a great deal about the lives of young people. In one of our Artscape Conversations, we spoke to her to find out more about the achievements and challenges of their work with the next generation.
Now based in the United States, South African born BO PETERSEN, actor, writer, director, voice over artist and theatre teacher, has come back temporarily, to her home country to perform in a play she wrote called Pieces of Me. Opening at the Baxter theatre on July 11, it tells her journey of uncovering a very deeply buried family secret about her father and consequently, about herself. Here she shares the back story with Beryl Eichenberger.
The Zeitz MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary African Art) is arguably one of the most creative institutions in Cape Town, not just because of what’s on the walls and floors, but because of what is created within it, not least in the educational wing. AND SO THE STORIES RAN AWAY was initially an exhibition of art for children held back in 2019. Four years later it’s become a series of children’s books – a collaboration between LIESL HARTMAN, Zeitz head of education, and artists and ‘story carers’, JIL...
