S9 E1: Sarah Lubala, Mahtem Shiferraw & Phillippa Yaa de Villiers: Writing Across Time

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts115/v4/e2/a4/55/e2a45554-ad48-2cef-4b93-42fdfd3d483e/mza_17547536135533246377.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

The Empty Chair by PEN SA

PEN South Africa

63 episodes

1 week ago

In The Empty Chair Podcast: A Transatlantic Conversation, PEN South Africa hosts authors, academics and activists based in South Africa and the USA. The podcast focuses on books, writing, social justice, freedom of expression, shared histories and possible futures. Each of our episodes is dedicated to an imprisoned writer or a writer who has been harassed by the state.

Arts

RSS

All content for The Empty Chair by PEN SA is the property of PEN South Africa and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Arts

https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/production/podcast_uploaded_nologo/14269001/14269001-1617729236970-8db277582fd43.jpg

S9 E1: Sarah Lubala, Mahtem Shiferraw & Phillippa Yaa de Villiers: Writing Across Time

The Empty Chair by PEN SA

59 minutes 42 seconds

2 years ago

S9 E1: Sarah Lubala, Mahtem Shiferraw & Phillippa Yaa de Villiers: Writing Across Time

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers interviews Sarah Lubala and Mahtem Shiferraw about their poetry collections, A History of Disappearance and Nomenclatures of Invisibility. Sarah and Mahtem read several of their poems and contemplate language, ancestors, writing for a collective, migration, loss and awe.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers lectures in Creative Writing at Wits University. She is the author of the poetry collections Taller than Buildings, The Everyday Wife, which won the 2011 South African Literary Prize, and ice-cream headache in my bone. She co-edited Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected Poems (2023) alongside Uhuru Phalafala.

Sarah Lubala is a Congolese-born poet. She has been shortlisted twice for the Gerald Kraak Award, and once for The Brittle Paper Poetry Award. She is the winner of the 14th edition of the Castello Di Duino prize. Her debut collection, A History of Disappearance, (Botsotso Publishing, 2022) won a Humanities and Social Sciences Award in 2023.

Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Fuchsia which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Your Body is War and Nomenclatures of Invisibility (BOA Editions Ltd., 2023). She is the founder and executive director of Anaphora Arts. She also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today.

In this episode we are in solidarity with writer and human rights defender Teesta Setalvad. We call on the authorities in India to drop the charges against her. You can read more about her case here: https://www.pen-international.org/news/india-writer-and-human-rights-defender-teesta-setalvad-faces-imprisonment-after-gujarat-high-court-refuses-bail-plea

As tributes to her, Sarah reads "If They Come for Us" by Fatimah Asghar, Mahtem reads “If They Come for Me: After Fatimah Asghar” and Phillippa reads “Black Things” by Heather Robertson

This podcast series is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in South Africa to promote open conversation and highlight shared histories.