Staff

	Prof David Medalie Director of the Unit for Creative Writing  Professor in the Department of English   Contact details:  Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 2421/ 2716  Fax: +27 12 420 5191  Email: [email protected]

INFORMATION ABOUT THE DIRECTOR OF THE UNIT FOR CREATIVE WRITING

Prof. David Medalie is an award-winning writer and has many years' experience of teaching Creative Writing. He is a short story writer, novelist and anthologist. His publications include two collections of short stories, The Shooting of the Christmas Cows (1990) (David Philip), The Mistress's Dog (2010) (Picador Africa/ Pan Macmillan) and a novel, The Shadow Follows (2006) (Picador Africa/ Pan Macmillan). He edited two anthologies of South African short stories, Encounters (1998) and Recognition (2017), both published by Wits University Press.

Prof. Medalie's writing has won or been short-listed for a number of literary awards. The Shooting of the Christmas Cows was awarded the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award prior to its publication in 1990. The collection was also short-listed for the CNA Debut Award in 1991. A short story entitled ‘Recognition’ was the winner of the Sanlam Short Story Award (in the unpublished category) in 1996. The Shadow Follows was short-listed in 2007 for the Commonwealth Literary Award in the category of Best First Book (Africa region), and the M-Net Literary Award. The Mistress's Dog was short-listed in 2011 for the University of Johannesburg Literary Award. The title story, ‘The Mistress’s Dog’, was awarded the Thomas Pringle Award by the English Academy of Southern Africa in 2008. It was also short-listed in 2011 for the Caine Prize for African Writing and was selected as one of the best twenty short stories of the post-apartheid period and was published in 2014, along with the other nineteen stories, in a collection entitled Twenty in 20. Most recently an unpublished short story by Prof. Medalie, 'Borrowed by the Wind', was short-listed for the Gerald Kraak Award.

Recent publications:

2018. ‘Borrowed by the Wind’ (short story). As You Like It: The Gerald Kraak Anthology (Vol. II): African Perspectives on Gender, Social Justice and Sexuality. Auckland Park: Jacana; The Other Foundation. 

2017. Recognition: An Anthology of South African Short Stories. Selected and Introduced by David Medalie. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 288pp.

2017. ‘“The Line of Maurice: Forster, Hollinghurst and the “Social Fabric”’. English Studies in Africa. Vol 60, no.1. 46-59.

2017. ‘The Secret Knows’ (short story). New Contrast. Vol. 45, Winter 2017.   

2016. ‘“Remembering my life under apartheid with fondness”: the memoirs of Jacob Dlamini and Chris van Wyk’. English in Africa. Vol. 43, no.3. 43-60.

full cv