Lebogang Mashile | |
|---|---|
 Mashile in 2019 | |
| Born | 7 February 1979 |
| Nationality | South African |
| Education | Law and international relations, University of the Witwatersrand |
| Alma mater | University of the Witwatersrand |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, writer, performance poet |
| Notable work | Hotel Rwanda |
Lebogang Mashile (born 7 February 1979) is an American-born South African actress, writer and performance poet. [1]
The daughter of exiled South African parents, Mashile was born in the United States, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, [2] and returned to South Africa in the mid-1990s after the end of apartheid. [3] She began to study law and international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand but became more interested in the arts. With Myesha Jenkins, Ntsiki Mazwai and Napo Masheane, she founded the poetry group Feela Sistah. [4]
She appeared in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda and has performed in a number of theatre productions, including Threads, [5] which combined dance, music and poetry. She also recorded a live performance album incorporating music and poetry, titled Lebo Mashile Live. [4] She co-produced and hosted the documentary programme L’Attitude on SABC 1 [1] and hosted a game show called Drawing the Line on SABC 2. [4]
In 2005, she published her first poetry collection, In a Ribbon of Rhythm, [6] for which she received the Noma Award in 2006. [4] She was included in Beyond Words: South African Poetics (flipped eye publishing, 2009), alongside Keorapetse Kgositsile, Don Mattera and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers), [7] and she is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [8]
Mashile and musician, performer, writer Majola released an EP in 2016. [9]
Mashile was named one of South Africa's Awesome Women of 2005 by Cosmopolitan [1] and one of the Top 100 youth in South Africa by the Mail & Guardian in 2006, 2007 and 2009. [10] In 2006, she was named the top personality in television by The Star in their annual Top 100 list, in 2007 she was the recipient of the City Press/Rapport Woman of Prestige Award, and was also named Woman of the Year for 2010 in the category of Arts and Culture by Glamour magazine. Mashile was cited as one of the Top 100 Africans by New African magazine in 2011 and in 2012 she won the Art Ambassador award at the inaugural Mbokodo Awards for South African Women in the Arts. Mashile performed at the Opening of Parliament in 2009. [9] She has been described as "probably the first name that comes to mind when thinking about a female writer making colossal waves in the poetry space". [11]
Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
The poetry of South Africa covers a broad range of themes, forms and styles. This article discusses the context that contemporary poets have come from and identifies the major poets of South Africa, their works and influence.
The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, which ran from 1980 to 2009, was an annual $10,000 prize for outstanding African writers and scholars who published in Africa. Within four years of its establishment, the prize "had become the major book award in Africa". It was one of the series of Noma Prizes.
Sonia Sanchez is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children's books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences, and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, including Krista Franklin. Sanchez is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Keorapetse William Kgositsile, also known by his pen name Bra Willie, was a South African Tswana poet, journalist and political activist. An influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, he was inaugurated as South Africa's National Poet Laureate in 2006. Kgositsile lived in exile in the United States from 1962 until 1975, the peak of his literary career. He made an extensive study of African-American literature and culture, becoming particularly interested in jazz. During the 1970s he was a central figure among African-American poets, encouraging interest in Africa as well as the practice of poetry as a performance art; he was well known for his readings in New York City jazz clubs. Kgositsile was one of the first to bridge the gap between African poetry and African-American poetry in the United States.
Grace Nichols FRSL is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Lesego Rampolokeng is a South African writer, playwright and performance poet.
Lebogang Precious Mathosa was a South African kwaito singer. Mathosa started her career as a founding member of the popular South African band Boom Shaka in 1994 at the age of 17, after she caught the eye of music producer Don Laka at a club in Johannesburg.
Donato Francisco Mattera, better known as Don Mattera, was a South African poet and author.
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Lebogang or Lebohang is a South African given name which is often shortened to Lebo. It may refer to
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