Shafinaaz Hassim

graduating with her masters in sociology. She moved back home and joined the family business and continued to write academic journals and published her master’s thesis as her first book, Daughters are Diamonds: Honour, Shame and Seclusion, in 2007. She was prompted to enter the manuscript in the Sunday Tribune competition.

“I was invited by the University of Kwazulunatal (UKZN) department of sociology in 2008 to lecture a course on feminism using the book for case studies,” she said. “A year later, I moved back to University of the Witwatersrand to teach a similar course in sociology. I resigned from Wits in

2012, and took on writing full time along with having launched Wordflute Press, my publishing house, in 2009.”

During this time, she was appointed a trustee with Wiphold’s Investment Trust – which looked at making investments on behalf of rural women shareholders. They shared dividends with both individual shareholders and organisations tasked with benefiting and empowering women of colour. She served four terms on the board and learned significantly from her esteemed and committed colleagues there.

She wrote a poignant book, Sophia, a story about domestic abuse, in 2012. The book was short-listed at the SA Literary Awards for the K Sello Duiker literary award in 2013 and the UJ Prize for Creative Writing in English 2013. A year later, it was presented for performance at the Pretoria State Theatre during Women’s Month. She is in discussions to turn Sophia into a film.

However, she is taking her time to finalise it to ensure she is happy with the outcome.

Her short story, The Pink Oysters, won in the Hay Festivals Africa39 category for Unesco, listing her as one of the top 39 authors under 39 in Africa. It was published in the Africa39 anthology by Bloomsbury UK.

Hassim is a sociologist and continues her research