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Rather than try to determine who lives in Cape Town and who does not, this is a long list of South African writers whom I did not interview.
There will be one further South African chapter of interviews with Blaize Kaye, Dave de Burgh, Efemia Chela, Fred Strydom, Joan de la Haye, Samuel Kolawole, Stephen Embleton, and Unathi Magubeni.
Nick Wood, Nikhil Singh, Gavin Chait, Ashley Jacobs, and Sarah Lotz have been previously interviewed or listed by this series.
Your attention is also drawn to Anike Kirsten’s list of South African speculative fiction writers. Novelists she highlights who are on my list include: Abigail Godsell, Angela Meadon, Christina Engela, Duncan John Reyneke, Edith Bulbring, H. Gibson, Jayde ver Elst, Jennifer Withers, Joanne MacGregor, Michael Smorenburg, Mico Pisanti, Rob Boffard, Ronel van Tonder, and Yelena Calavera.
This lists focuses on people with sometimes just short fiction to their name.
Adrienne Woods
... is a South African citizen and author of e-books such as Firebolt.
Alex Latimer
... is one half of “Frank Owen,” an honour shared with Diane Awerbuck, and is co-author of North and South. His other works include The Space Race, about a South African space programme, and numerous children’s picture books, which he writes and illustrates.
Amy Power Jansen
... is the author of many fantasy short stories which have appeared in magazines or collections such as Myriad Lands.
Andrew Miller
... won the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award for 2015 for his SF novel Dub Steps, which was also shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2016. Andrew is also a performance poet and cultural critic. Watch him interviewed on YouTube.
Andrew Salomon
... is the author of Tokoloshe Song and several published short stories.
Anike Kirsten
... is the author of the novel Of Beasts and Men and a review of recent South African science fiction that adds many more names to this list.
Aoife Lennon-Ritchie
... is known mainly for her work as an agent, but is also the author of the novel The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay.
Arthur Goldstuck
... is the author of two science fiction shorts published in the South African Playboy Magazine. One of them, “Sphinx Trouble,” was reprinted in The Best of South African Science Fiction (2007).
Bontle Senne
... is the author of the YA fantasy adventure series The Shadow Chasers.
Cat Hellisen
... is frequently mentioned as one of South Africa’s finest fantasy writers. Her short story “The Worme Bridge” won the SSDA Award for a story in a non-fantasy collection, Water. Her novel Beast Master (2016) garnered praise. In March 2017, she also published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She moved to the UK and I have not interviewed her in either country.
Charlie Human
One of Lauren Beukes’s favourite authors, whose work includes the novel Apocalypse Now Now (2014) and its sequel Kill Baxter (2015). Read a BSFA interview with him.
Crystal Warren
... is the author of fantasy stories published in the magazine Ariel.
Deon Meyer
... is one of South Africa’s bestselling authors, usually of mainstream literary thrillers. In 2016 Koors, a Cormac-McCarthy-like story of a murder after a virus has wiped out most of humankind, was his first science fiction novel. It was translated into English as Fever. Visit his website.
Donald Mullany/ Caldon Mull
... is the author of the collection The Estuary Tales.
Fiona Khan
... is the author of children’s books such as The Magic Calabash.
Gail Dendy
... is better known as a poet but did contribute a story, “Marion’s Mirror,” to Terra Incognita.
Helen Brain
... is a much respected South African author of YA fantasy/dystopian novels, most recently Elevation 1: The Thousand Steps. Visit her website to find out more.
Jason Myki Snyman
... contributed “What if You Slept?” to the SSDA anthology Terra Incognita.
Jennifer Thorpe
... is the author of “Revelations,” the Diane-Awerbuck-edited anthology of short stories, The Ghost Eater and Other Stories.
Jessica Freedom
... her novel The Detritus Circle was published by Wits University. She is also the author of several stories, and uses science fiction as a teaching mode.
Liam Kruger
... had a story “You Are in the City” published in Omenana issue 2. His story “Closing Time” was in AfroSF, edited by Ivor Hartman, and his writing has also appeared in Prufrock, GQ, Mahala, and The Rumpus.
Lindokuhle Nkosi
... is a critic, artist, and Afrofuturist based in Cape Town. Read an interview in This Is Africa.
Masha du Toit
... is a highly regarded author. Her most recently published novel, The Naked Eye (2016), is about a cyberdog, with its sequel The Real about to be published in 2017. Masha is also the author of the Sisters series and the Crooked World series. Her short story collection is Strange Neighbours. Visit her website.
Mishka Hoosen
... contributed the story “Spirits of the Dead Keep Watch” to the anthology Terra Incognita. Her novel about madness, Call It a Difficult Night (2015), has speculative elements.
Monique Snyman
... in addition to a prolific editorial career, is the author of Multi-Nation (2017).
Narcisse Sadi
... is a martial arts expert based in Cape Town who has written a series of speculative novels as Elcid.
Nicholas Woode-Smith
... is the author of The Fall of Zona.
Niq Mholongo
... is very funny and very realistic. If you want to understand black student frustration just after apartheid “ended,” go read his novel Dog Eat Dog. The more recent collection Affluenza is fun too. Read Lauren Beukes’s The Spark on his novel No Way Home. Niq is on Twitter.
Nokulunga Caroline Goba
... is the author of the e-book The Stone That Was Never Turned (2016).
Paul Crilley
... was born in Scotland, lives in South Africa, and is the author of the novel Poison City.
Petrus de Kock
... is the author of the novel Coup d’état in the Land of Zep Tepi
Phillip Steyn
... illustrates comics and contributed “Esomnesia” to the anthology Terra Incognita.
Phumlani Mhlanga
... is the author of the printed novella The Journey of Two-Boy. Also known as Phumlani Reeds.
Richard Gradner
... is the author of e-books available on many platforms, such as Return to Lemuria.
Robert S. Malan
... is the author of Quest & The Sign of the Shining Beast, the first of the series of illustrated novellas A Darkness In Mind.
Sarah Jane Woodward
... is a contributor to Terra Incognita with her story, “The Carthagion.”
Sarah Lotz
... has gone from being a co-writer with Lauren Beukes on the TV series Urbo: the Adventures of Pax Afrika, to collaborations with many other SF writers , to her most recent novels. Her recent series, including The Three and Day Four, has been described as a cross between Stephen King and disaster fiction. In 2017 she has published The White Road, a novel combining clickbait web journalism, extreme adventure, and something like a ghost. Check out Sarah’s own website.
Sibongile Fisher
... is the author of a speculative story in the SSDA anthology Migrations.
Tiah Marie Beautement
... is the author of numerous short stories and two novels. Her latest, This Day (Modjaji, 2014), was longlisted for The Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize. She contributed “Hands” to the SSDA anthology of SFF Terra Incognita.
Sergio Pereira
... is the author of Don’t Steal from the Devil, a short story collection.
Suzanne van Rooyen
... is a South African citizen living in Finland, author of the novel Scardust (2016).
T Q Zama
... lives in Johannesburg and is the author of Skyborn, a fantasy novella available online.
Wairimũ Mũrĩithi
... is a Kenyan resident of SA, the author of the story “Love like Blue” published in the SSDA anthology Water (2015), and of “Provisional Notes on Dying Here” from the anthology Emergence I (2016).
Zakes Mda
... should need no introduction as he is one of South Africa’s leading novelists. I was scheduled to interview him, but the only night we could both make in Johannesburg was the evening of the world premiere of the film version of his speculative novel The Whale Caller, published in 2006. Other novels by him with speculative elements include The Heart of Redness (2000) and The Sculptors of Mapungubwe (2013).
(Up Next: Uganda)