UCT’s Department of English Language and Literature launches The Writers’ Seminar

Acclaimed South African writer Damon Galgut will be the first guest in a new series of seminars hosted by the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Associate Professor Nadia Davids announced the launch of the new series earlier this month.

“Alongside our existing departmental research seminars, we will be hosting a monthly salon or seminar where we will be engaging with celebrated South African writers about their soon-to-be, or recently published work,” Associate Professor Davids said.

The series will be known as The Writers’ Seminar.

“We hope that this will provide a wonderful opportunity for our students to engage with the South African writers that they read, admire, and … will begin to discover.”

The series will kick off on Friday, 22 October, and will take the form of a conversation between Davids and Galgut about his most recent novel, The Promise. The Promise has been shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, making this the third time that Galgut has been shortlisted for this prestigious award. Galgut, who lives and works in Cape Town, has won several awards for his fiction, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) and the Sunday Times Prize for Fiction.

Speaking about The Writers’ Seminar, Davids said, “It is also our way of supporting the ecology of the South African literary landscape by building relationships between living writers and a new generation of readers ... We hope that this will provide a wonderful opportunity for our students to engage with the South African writers that they read, admire, and in some cases, will begin to discover.”

Seminar details

Date: 22 October 2021

Time: 12:00 to 13:30

Attend via Zoom.

Following this coming Friday’s seminar, Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction’s nominated Yewande Omotoso will join Dr Polo Moji to discuss her new novel, “An Unusual Grief”. This will take place on Friday, 12 November.