AS with the previous two years of the Franschhoek Literary Festival (FLF), writers will be visiting local schools and the Groot Drakenstein Correctional Facility to do workshops and take part in discussions on relevant literature-related topics.
Each year the “Voices of our Valley” Poetry Competition attracts entries in three languages and four categories – primary and high schools, prison and adult. A booklet of the winning poems of this year’s entries will be published.
Learners will attend an event where writers and poets speak and perform, followed up with discussion groups about writing.
The writers who will participate in this event on Friday 15 May include poets Lebo Mashile and Finuala Dowling, novelist Edyth Bulbring, journalist and biographer Pippa Green and satirist Tom Eaton.
Cape Town’s Helen Moffett and Durban’s Dianne Stewart will also be running additional creative writing sessions.
Stellenbosch African Languages lecturer and writer, Mhlobo Jadezwini, has been conducting isiXhosa creative writing classes with keen learners at Dalabuhle Primary School. On Friday 15 May he will speak at the school assembly and on Saturday 16 May at 10:00 in the Church Hall. He will also chair the Poetry Competition winners’ event, which will have readings by the winners and of poems in four languages: Afrikaans, English, isiXhosa and isiZulu.
The Franschhoek Youth Affair group of performers who will be putting on their cabaret Maid at Groot Drakenstein will be accompanied by journalist and storyteller, Max du Preez, and novelists and FLF Director Christopher Hope, Justin Cartwright and Eben Venter.
