Dr. Zakes Mda, Professor of Creative Writing: Fiction and Ohio University alum, will receive an honorary degree at Dartmouth College’s commencement in June, reports the Valley News (NH).
Dartmouth Now further reports that Mda, a novelist, poet, playwright and professor, will receive a Doctor of Arts. Mda is also an Ohio University alum, having earned an M.A. and an M.F.A.
Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, who writes as Zakes Mda, is a novelist, poet, and playwright, and a professor of creative writing at Ohio University. Born in South Africa, he holds degrees from Ohio University and the University of Capetown. His novel The Heart of Redness won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa as well as the inaugural Sunday Times (South Africa) Fiction Prize.
Mda grew up in a household deeply engaged in South Africa’s politics. His father, Ashby Peter Mda, was a colleague of the late Nelson Mandela. Zakes Mda published an autobiography, Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider, in 2012, and the novel The Sculptors of Mapungubwe, in 2013.
Mda is a founding member of the African Writers Trust. He divides his time between Ohio and South Africa, where he is a dramaturge at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and a director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Sophiatown, Johannesburg.
See the Dartmouth Now report.
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