Book Launch: 'Rain Dance- An Anthology' by Lynsey Ebony Chutel, Jocelyn Fryer, Uvile Memory Samkelisiwe Ximba

ABOUT

Join us for the launch of 'Rain Dance- An Anthology', where we'll be in discussion with the authors Lynsey Ebony Chutel, Jocelyn Fryer, Uvile Memory Samkelisiwe Ximba about their latest work.

About the authors:

Lynsey Ebony Chutel

Lynsey is a writer and journalist living in Johannesburg, South Africa. As a journalist, she covers a continent in flux, through the lens of politics, culture, gender and climate. She has travelled through more than a dozen African countries as a reporter. As a fiction writer, Lynsey Ebony is comfortable with admitting that she is still finding her voice, and is both terrified and exhilarated by the prospect that this may be a lifelong search.

Her essays on the historical and contemporary identity of South Africa’s descendants of the enslaved and indigenous people, known as Coloured South Africa, will appear in the forthcoming book Coloured: How Classification became Culture (published by Jonathan Ball). Her fiction has appeared in the literary journal Pank and her still evolving debut novel was shortlisted for the Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship. 

UVILE MEMORY SAMKELISIWE XIMBA 

Uvile is a writer and creative practitioner. She completed her Bachelor of Arts Honours in Politics and International Relations and Dramatic Arts. She was selected as an ASSITEJ South Africa ‘In The Works’ 2020 playwright, and worked as an intern at Sonke Gender Justice.

Her research interest lies in issues affecting black LGBTQIA+ women in South Africa; her Honours thesis was on creative approaches as dialogue for LGBTQIA+ Intimate Partner Violence. This thesis, Beyond the rainbow: creative approaches as dialogue for LGBTQIA+ intimate partner violence, was published in the Journal Of Contemporary African Studies.

Uvile is the co-founder of a multimedia production company, Thamba Creatives, which tells women’s stories in South Africa. Her debut novel, Dreaming In Colour, does just that, telling the story of Langa, a young woman navigating relationships, self, and memory. It is Langa's story of coming out to herself, of discerning the history behind the closed door of conscious memory.

When it comes to her creativity, she prioritises interdisciplinary praxis and her stance is, “Why wait?” In another life, Uvile was a cat.

Jocelyn Fryer

Having majored in a masters in English Literature, Jocelyn is finally trying to find the words to bring to light the causes close to her heart.

It is so far an eclectic collection of writing it can be said, from reframing conversations around mental health matters, being diagnosed and hospitalised at the age of 29 with bipolar disorder, to rescuing forgotten folklore and female heroines of literary days gone by, her curiosities and interests are vast. But always, she believes, she invests in stories that need telling, stories that need some hope.

And at the ripe 'old' age of 37, she has begun to try her hand full time at fiction, besides her blogging, to tell her story in all its guises, a story made of many stories of recovery, a story of suffering, but also, of joy. Hope. Beyond this, in the fiction she writes now, wiser, she seeks to distil the marvels, the wonders, in even the very most ordinary. Recently, she published her first novella, Zimmer, on Amazon Kindle.

You can otherwise find her either barefoot in the kitchen or advocating the adoption of stray animals. That is, when she’s not battling the thorn in her side that is white heteronormative patriarchy or stigmas. Other times you'll find her at her best, enjoying a patch of grass by the wildflowers.

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