POWER OF AUTHORS

Barbara Hayes, based in London, is deputy chief executive of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, a not-for-profit, non-union organisation, wholly owned by the 95,000 authors in its membership. Barbara regularly lobbies in the UK Parliament for authors’ rights; was elected chair of the Society of Audiovisual Authors in Brussels; is company secretary of the International Authors Forum and in 2016 became chair of the Public Lending Right Steering Committee.

Dr Divine Fuh

FROM THE STONE AGE TO THE DIGITAL AGE: THE MANY VOICES OF THE AUTHOR THROUGH TIME

Divine Fuh is a social anthropologist and the director of the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town. His research focuses on the politics of suffering and smiling, and particularly on how urban youth seek ways of smiling in the midst of their suffering. He has researched Botswana, Cameroon, Senegal and South Africa. His current work focuses on the political economy of Pan-African knowledge production, and also on AI and the ethics of care in Africa.

Dr Duduzile Zwane

CLOSING ADDRESS

Dr Duduzile Zwane is a 32-year old aspiring author. She was born in Vryheid, KwaZulu-Natal. Zwane loved reading and writing so much that she decided to pursue it professionally. She enrolled at the University of KwaZulu-Natal to read for a degree in Communications. After a journalism stint at Independent Newspapers, she decided to return to academia to obtain a postgraduate qualification. Her doctorate in Communication Studies was obtained in 2019, from the University of Johannesburg.

Elinor Sisulu

OPENING ADDRESS

Zimbabwean-born South African writer and human rights activist, Elinor Sisulu, combines training in history, English literature, development studies and feminist theory from institutions in Zimbabwe, Senegal and the Netherlands. She is a founder member and current executive director of the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation. In 2019 she was awarded an honorary PhD by the University of Pretoria for her work in human rights and reading promotion.

Francis Gbormittah

Francis Gbormittah is an academic who focuses on media arts studies and practice. He currently lectures in the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ghana, Legon. Francis is also the president of the Ghana Association of Writers. He obtained degrees related to his fields of pursuit from the Gilmorehill Centre for Theatre, Film and TV, University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the National Film and Television Institute, Accra.

Fred Khumalo

Fred Khumalo is a novelist and short story writer based in Johannesburg. He holds an MA Creative Writing from Wits University, is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World (Cologne, Germany), a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, a Fellow of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and is also a PhD (Creative Writing) candidate at the University of Pretoria. In 2021 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of African Literature at the University of South Africa.

Geoffroy Pelletier

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

Geoffroy Pelletier was Director General for eight years of the SGDL (Société des gens de lettres), the main and oldest French association of writers. He was also head of the Department of Publishing and Bookshops at the Book and Reading Service of the Ministry of Culture for more than ten years. He holds a Master’s degree in Publishing from the ESCP (Paris Business School).

Joan Smith

Joan Smith is a novelist, columnist and human rights campaigner. She is the author of six novels, two of which were made into films by the BBC, and several non-fiction titles, including the feminist classic Misogynies and a short polemic, Down With The Royals. She is a former Chair of the English PEN Writers in Prison Committee, and has chaired the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board since 2013. She is a non-executive director of ALCS and a supporter of authors’ rights, including copyright.

John Degen

ARE AUTHORS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES? PART 1

John Degen is executive director of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and chair of the International Authors Forum (IAF) in the UK, serving and representing over 700,000 authors worldwide. He is a poet and novelist with three published books. John has worked for many years as an arts administrator, arts funder and policy advocate on cultural issues. He has spent his pandemic year raising money for authors’ emergency relief (through his job) and for the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (through a long virtual hike across Britain).

Prof Keyan G Tomaselli

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

Prof Keyan G Tomaselli is Distinguished Professor, Dean’s Office, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, and Professor Emeritus and Fellow, University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is the editor of Critical Arts and founder and co-editor of the Journal of African Cinemas. He is an editorial board member of book series published by Unisa Press, University of Toronto Press and Michigan State University. He is editor of the ANFASA Magazine and serves on the Scholarly Publication Committee of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He has published extensively on the political economy of scholarly publishing in journals like The Thinker and the SA Journal of Science.

Luke Alcott

ARE AUTHORS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES? PART 1

Maggie Gee

ARE AUTHORS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES? PART 1

Maggie Mary Gee is an English novelist. After working in publishing as an editor, she took a research job at Wolverhampton Polytechnic where she completed a PhD. Maggie is a Fellow and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been a member of the Society of Authors' Committee of Management and the government Public Lending Right committee and was from 2004-2008 the first female Chair of Council of the Royal Society of Literature. She is now one of its Vice Presidents.

Maureen Duffy

Maureen Duffy is a notable contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She turned to writing full-time as a poet and playwright after being commissioned to produce a screenplay by Granada Television. Maureen is the author of 34 published works of fiction, including 9 collections of poetry , non-fiction, and 16 plays for stage, screen and radio. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of King's College London, and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, as well as President of Honor of the British Copyright Council and the ALCS, and a CISAC gold medalist.

Monica Seeber

FROM THE STONE AGE TO THE DIGITAL AGE: THE MANY VOICES OF THE AUTHOR THROUGH TIME

Monica Seeber founded ANFASA in 2004 and was its first director. She is currently a Board of Director of ANFASA. She is a publishing consultant and book editor, and co-author with Nicholas Evans of The Politics of Publishing in South Africa (2001) as well as a guide to the management of copyright in book publishing, written for WIPO. Monica has also written numerous articles on copyright and publishing. She is a founder member of the African Publishers Network (APNET).

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ is an associate professor of English at Cornell University and a member of the African Literature Association’s Executive Council, he is the co-founder of the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature. Mukoma holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a BA in English and Political Science from Albright College.

Pierre Lesburgueres

Pierre Lesburguères is IFRRO’s Manager for Policy and Regional Development. He represents the interests of Collective Management Organisations in the international sphere, working on current copyright issues and initiatives with intergovernmental organisations such as WIPO. He also coordinates IFRRO’s development activities, which includes working on collective licensing and national legislations, implementation of best practices by Collective Management Organisations, and developing relations with governments and rightholders’ associations.

Rehana Rossouw

Rehana Rossouw has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Wits University. Her first novel, What Will People Say?, won the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences prize for fiction in 2017. Her second novel, New Times, was longlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Awards in 2018.

Richard Poplak

Richard Poplak is an award-winning author, journalist, and filmmaker. He has become one of the most widely read and controversial political journalists in South Africa, editing at large for the Daily Maverick. Poplak has reported from over 25 developing countries, for the Financial Times, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, among others. He was recently part of a team that won the prestigious Global Shining Light award for investigative journalism.

Dr Siphiwo Mahala

Siphiwo Mahala is a short story writer, novelist, playwright and critic in both English and Xhosa. He holds a PhD in English Literature from UNISA. He is a research associate at the University of Pretoria and a research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg; a research associate at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria. He is the editor of the new Imbiza journal for African writing.

V. Njabulo Zwane

V. Njabulo Zwane is a researcher in the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) Humanities faculty. He did his undergraduate studies in Politics, History and Economics at Rhodes University; and also holds a BA (Hons) degree in History from Wits University. As a scholar, he has written on the historiography of Black transnational cultural practices and African political economy. Currently, his research interests are on Black South African musicians’ alternative constructions of home/the nation under and after apartheid, as well as the writings of Walter B. Nhlapo.

Professor Wangui wa Goro has enjoyed a multidisciplinary life spent over forty years as a public intellectual and has spoken extensively in many parts of the world. Academically, she is a leading translation theoriest, and professionally she works in an international organisation within the language department. She is also an academic in leading institutions in Europe and Africa and is involved in literary work across different parts of the world. She is a widely acclaimed translator, writer, poet, academic, cultural curator, editor with a great passion for languages, literature and intersectional freedom.

Prof Wangui wa Goro