Grant Scheme Winners 2011
 Koni Benson is trained as a historian and currently holds a Post Doctoral Fellowship at UCT, expanding and preparing her PhD dissertation research on women’s resistance movements against forced removals and for housing in Cape Town for publication. Since 2006 she has worked with a range of social justice organisations and trade unions in popular education and research processes and teaches university courses on gender history. |
 Makhosazana Xaba holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of the Witwatersrand and has published two books of poetry: These Hands and Tongues of their Mothers . Her poetry, short stories, essays and profiles have appeared in many anthologies. She received a grant for a biography project; Drawn in Ochre: The Life and Writings of Noni Jabavu, 1919-2008. Noni’s biography is planned as an 18 chapter long book in three parts, namely: Roots and Wings, Movement in Exile and Journeying in Words. |
 Anne Schuster holds an MPhil degree in Language and Literature Education from UCT. She has conducted creative writing workshops over a number of years for individuals and organisations. Her project is a Creative Writing Workbook which will contain exercises and writing techniques that embody a particular approach to creativity which enables writers to break through blocks, develop an authentic writing voice and cultivate the habit of a regular writing practice. |
 Fred de Vries Fred de Vries is a Dutch writer/journalist, who has published several non-fiction books. He is currently in the process of finalising his book on South African Beat poet Sinclair Beiles, tentatively titled Catastrophes . Sinclair Beiles was South Africa’s only Beat poet, who used to hang out in Paris with the likes of William Burroughs and Gregory Corso, and in Greece with Leonard Cohen and other late sixties luminaries. |
 Sophie von der Heyden is a lecturer at Stellenbosch University, where she specialises in marine molecular ecology and marine conservation planning. She received a grant to write a southern African marine guide for children. In the book she will explore themes such as different marine habitats, animals and plants and why it is great to be a marine scientist! She hopes that this book will not only educate, but inspire a generation of environmental leaders. |
 Salma Ismail is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) at the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral studies focused on poor women’s learning in a housing social movement. Her project is a book that puts together a detailed case study which tracks the stories of women in the Victoria Mxenge Housing Development Association (VM) who realised their dreams of building houses and communities. |
 Nic Coetzer is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town where he teaches design and the history and theory of architecture. Nic’s interest in space, identity and power was defined through his thesis. He is currently recrafting this into the putatively titled Building Apartheid: On Architecture and Order in Imperial Cape Town. In it he examines the role that British architects and architectural ideas played in preparing the soil into which the seeds of apartheid were sown. |
 Edward-John Bottomley is a senior journalist at the financial daily Sake24. He received his Master’s degree in Geographical Research at the University of Cambridge. He is working on turning his thesis on poor whites in Johannesburg into a book. It will examine the history and development of poor whiteism in South Africa from the late nineteenth century until the present, and aims to illustrate how the ‘poor white problem’ was crucial to the development of modern South Africa. |