End Date :
Deutsches Haus,
420 West 116th Street
A reading and book signing with Ingrid de Kok, Yvette Christianse and Evie Shockley.
We would like to thank the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, Africana Studies at Barnard College and Barnard Women Poets for their support.
Ingrid de Kok
Ingrid de Kok’s poetry includes five volumes, Familiar Ground, Transfer, Terrestrial Things,Seasonal Fires, and Other Signs (2011). Her work has also appeared in numerous South African and international journals, and has been translated into many languages. She was selected by Adrienne Rich to be included among the best poets published in America in 1996, and appears in the globally recognized Longman Anthology of Women’s Literature (2001) and the internationally celebratedWomen Writing Africa: The Southern Region (2003) as well as the Heineman Book of African Women’s Poetry and the Harper Collins World Reader. In 2006, Robert Pinsky, the US poet laureate, singled out a poem from Seasonal Fires for a careful reading and analysis, commending that book in a rare Washington Post review (he has done so for no other South African writer). Her work has been recognized and rewarded by prestigious fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio programme and the Civitelli Ranieri Foundation. She is also the recipient of the Herman Charles Bosman Prize Award for English Literature (2003) and Dalro Poetry Prize (2002).
Ingrid de Kok grew up in Stilfontein, a gold mining town in South Africa. When she was 12 years old, her parents moved to Johannesburg. In 1977 she emigrated to Canada where she lived until returning to South Africa in 1984. Ingrid is a Fellow of the University of Cape Town, a Professor in Extra Mural Studies and part of a team of two that designs and administers the public non-formal educational curriculum that constitutes the Extra-Mural Programmes at the University of Cape Town. She has also designed and co-ordinated national colloquiums and cultural programmes, such as one on Technology and Reconstruction and on Equal Opportunity Policy and At the Fault Line: Cultural Inquiries into Truth and Reconciliation and runs various capacity building, civic and trade union programmes. She alternates in the role of Director.
Evie Shockley
Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Evie Shockley received her BA from Northwestern University. After studying Law at the University of Michigan, she earned her PhD in African Literature from Duke University.
Shockley’s first book, The Gorgon Goddess, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2001. Since then she has published three books: a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006),31 words * prose poems (Belladonna* Books, 2007), and the new black(Wesleyan University Press, 2011). Embracing both free verse and formal structures, Shockley straddles the divide between traditional and experimental poetics. A review of her work in Library Journal noted that, “Shockley’s work incorporates elements of myth without being patently ‘mythical’ and is personal without being self-indulgent, sentimental without being saccharine.” Her reported influences include Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, and Harryette Mullen.
A Cave Canem graduate fellow, Shockley was also awarded a residency at the Hedgebrook Retreat for Women Writers in 2003. Two of her poems were displayed in the Biko 30/30 exhibit, a commemoration of the life and work of anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko, which toured South Africa in 2007. Shockley was co-editor of the poetry journal jubilat from 2004-2007, and teaches African American Literature and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Yvette Christiansë
Yvette Christiansë is a South African-born poet, novelist, and scholar. She is the author of two books of poetry: Imprendehora (published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press 2009) anda novel,Castaway (Duke University Press, 1999).Imprendehora was a finalist for the Via Afrika Herman Charles Bosman Prize in 2010 and Castaway was a finalist in the 2001 PEN International Poetry Prize. Her novel Unconfessed (Other Press, 2006; Kwela Books, 2007; Querido, 2007) was a finalist for the Hemingway/PEN Prize for first fiction and received a 2007 ForeWord Magazine BEA Award. It was also shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2008, and nominated for the Ama Ata Aidoo Prize 2010. Her poetry has been published in the U.S., South Africa, Australia, Canada, France and Italy. She is also the recipient of The Harri Jones Memorial Prize for poetry (Australia).
She teaches poetry and prose of former English colonies (with an emphasis on South Africa, the Caribbean and Australia), narratives of African Diaspora, 20th Century African American Literatures, poetics and creative writing. Her research interests include the nexus between theories of race and gender, class and postcoloniality. She has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Center and a Visiting Professor at Princeton University’s Center for Creative and Performing Arts. She has also been a National Research Council Fellow at the University of Witwatersrand and a visiting writer at the University of Cape Town. Her manuscript on Toni Morrison’s poetics and is forthcoming from Fordham University Press. She is currently writing a book on representations of Liberated Africans or Recaptives between 1807 and 1886.
