Everyone is present at the coolest literary awards yet
A cold front couldn’t put a chill on this celebration of writing
Short and to the point but could’ve worked better in a warmer setting.
That’s my quick review of this year’s Sunday Times Literary Awards.
We were gathered on the rooftop of the Hill on Empire conference and events venue in Parktown on Friday afternoon for SA’s most prestigious literary accolades.
The venue is undoubtedly one of the city’s best viewpoints, offering panoramic vistas of the City of Gold, but as a spring cold front crept up, many were grateful they’d not closeted their winter coats just yet. For those who had, blankets were thankfully at hand.
This year, the traditional sitdown dinner was eschewed in favour of a more social cocktail soirée.
Before the awards were handed out we helped ourselves to a mezze-style harvest table spread including cheeses, hummus and roast butternut with dukkah and honey, while those keen on protein could savour Parma ham slivers and chicken breast in a creamy sauce.
It was at the table that I met one of this year’s shortlisted authors, Anneliese Burgess, who I remember watching in hardhitting SABC news exposés many moons ago. Her book, Heist! SA’s Cash-in-transit Epidemic Uncovered, was nominated for the Alan Paton nonfiction award, which this year marks its 30th anniversary. Is it an insight into brazen robbers like Colin Chauke? “Colin Chauke is famous, but in the underworld they think he’s overrated — that he was never as good as his legend suggested,” she tells me. On to catching up with author/publisher Melinda Ferguson and then Pan Macmillan’s Terry Morris, whose imprint Picador Chikane.
Other guests included author Elinor Sisulu, there with her husband Max, and someone who always gives me the warmest of hugs, Gcina Mhlophe, the activist, storyteller and poet.
Sunday Times contributing books editor Michele Magwood officiated, and there were speeches by our magazine supplements publisher, Aspasia Karras, the South African Book Development Council’s Nikki Crowster and Professor Andries Oliphant of Unisa.
In the underworld they think Chauke was never as good as his legend Anneliese Burgess
Author of ‘Heist!’
Tears flow when Zimbabweborn Siphiwe Ndlovu’s The Theory of Flight receives the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and she hugs her mother, Sarah Nokuthula Ndlovu. Artist Terry Kurgan, on being announced as recipient of the Alan Paton award for Everyone is Present: Essays on Photography, Family and Memory, includes in her thanks her Polish grandfather, “who saw fit to keep incredibly detailed journals documenting his everyday life, and photographs — and for leaving them behind”.