BORN::FREE x Connect ZA

Participating poets

• Belinda Zhawi

  Belinda Zhawi is a Zimbabwean-born writer, educator and resident of London. Her work explores themes of sexuality, displacement, gender roles and intersectionality. She’s performed across the UK in numerous venues, festivals and events including Africa Writes, Bestival and the Southbank Centre. Zhawi co-founded and hosts the monthly poetry night BORN::FREE. She is currently the 2016/17 Associate Poet for the ICA and is working on her debut pamphlet, Sugar/Savage.

• Katleho Kano Shoro

  Katleho Kano Shoro is a South African performance poet and academic. Her work centres on African intellectualism, particularly through exploring the intersections between academic and artistic practice. In addition to her forthcoming debut collection of poetry (2017, Modjaji Books), her poetry has been published in Pear Drop (UK), Killens Review of Arts and Letters Journal (US), Badilisha Poetry (Africa-wide) and Naane la Moya (SA).

  She’s the co-editor of The Spoken Word Project: Stories Travelling through Africa and has facilitated and performed at literary festivals such as Franschhoek (SA) and Open Book (SA). She won the 2016 Gauteng Slam Championship and was runner-up for the 2016 CSP National Slam. Shoro continues to perform in various Johannesburg and Cape Town-based poetry shows.

• Lebohang Masango

  Lebohang Masango is a poet and Master’s candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. She’s a freelance writer and social commentator with interests in gender, race and popular culture. She recently featured in Standard Bank’s #Today campaign, in which she hosted a storytelling event for her original children’s story Mpumi’s Magic Beads. Masango was the ambassador for the ‘Zazi, Know Your Strength’, campaign, a sexual health programme across all higher education institutions in South Africa.

  She’s performed widely, including for the Sunday Times Literary Awards and the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences’ inaugural Book, Creative and Digital Collections Awards in 2016. Masango has been published in Mike Alfred’s Twelve + One (2014), a book of poetry and interviews with some of Johannesburg’s most notable poets. In 2014, her poetry was featured on Reason’s song Endurance alongside HHP. In 2016, she was named as one of Cosmopolitan Magazine: South Africa’s “Awesome Women”.

• Rachel Long

  Rachel Long was awarded a Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship in 2015. She’s Assistant Tutor on the Barbican Young Poets’ programme and leader of Octavia: Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, housed at Southbank Centre, London.