Award-winning South African playwright and novelist Zakes Mda will read from his work on Thursday, March 3, at Grand Valley State University. The former visiting professor at Yale and the University of Vermont now teaches at Ohio University and is the dramaturge at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
His recent novel, The Madonna of Excelsior, is set in Excelsior, a small South African town where, in the 1970s, 19 citizens were charged with violating immorality laws that forbade sex between blacks and whites. Mda's writing has been described in the New York Times Book Review as politically astute with satire, social realism and a critical reexamination of the South African past.
Several English Department faculty members are teaching Mda's work this semester to coincide with his visit. His lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in the Cook-DeWitt Center; a reception and book signing begins at 3. The event is free and open to the public.
His visit is co-sponsored by Grand Valley's Departments of English, Writing, Modern Languages, History, African/American Studies and Padnos International Center.
For more information contact Corinna McLeod, Assistant Professor of English at Grand Valley, (616) 331-8576.
