Makhosazana Xaba | |
---|---|
Born | 1957 (age 66–67) Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa |
Alma mater | University of the Witwatersrand |
Occupation(s) | Poet and short-story writer |
Awards | South African Literary Awards Short Story Award |
Makhosazana Xaba (born 10 July 1957) is a South African poet and short-story writer. She trained as a nurse and has worked a women's health specialist in NGOs, as well as writing on gender and health. She is Associate Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. [1]
Makhosazana (Khosi) Xaba was born in Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to Glenrose Nomvula Mbatha and Rueben Bejanmin Xaba, the second of five children. [2] She has an MA degree in creative writing from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) and is working on a biography of Noni Jabavu.
Xaba won the Deon Hofmeyr Award for Creative Writing (2005) for her unpublished short story "Running". [2] Her poems have appeared in publications including Timbila, Sister Namibia , Botsotso, South African Writing, Green Dragon and Echoes, [2] and have been collected in These Hands (2005) [3] and Tongues of Their Mothers (2008). A book of her short stories, Running and Other Stories, was published in 2013, [4] and won the 2014 Nadine Gordimer South African Literary Awards Short Story Award. [5]
Xaba is editor of the 2026 anthology Like the Untouchable Wind: An Anthology of Poems, about "the life, experience and visions of African lesbians". [6] [7]
She is also a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [8]
With Athambile Masola, Xaba introduced the book Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home, a collection of Jabavu's Daily Dispatch columns, published in 2023. [9] [10]
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