Sindiwe Magona


Sindiwe Magona is a South African writer.

Early life

Magona is a native of the former Transkei region. She grew up in Bouvlei near Cape Town, where she worked as a domestic and completed her secondary education by correspondence. Magona later graduated from the University of South Africa and earned her Masters of Science in Organisational Social Work from Columbia University.

Career

She starred as Singisa in the isiXhosa classic drama Ityala Lamawele.
She worked in various capacities for the United Nations for over 20 years, retiring in 2003.
In the 2013 computer-animated adventure comedy film Khumba she was the voice actor for the character Gemsbok Healer.
She is Writer-in-Residence at the University of the Western Cape and has been a visiting Professor working at Georgia State University.

Author

She published two autobiographies: To My Children's Children and Forced To Grow, two collections of short stories: Living Loving and Lying Awake at Night and Push-Push and Other Stories; and four novels: Mother to Mother, Beauty's Gift Life is a Hard but Beautiful Thing, and Chasing Tails of My Father's Cattle!
She published her autobiography To My Children's Children in 1990. In 1998, she published Mother to Mother, a fictionalized account of the Amy Biehl killing, which she adapted into a play. This was performed at the Baxter Theatre complex in late 2009 and the film rights were acquired by Type A Films in 2003. She wrote autobiographies and short story collections. Her novel Beauty's Gift was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book, Africa Region. In 2009, Please, Take Photographs, her first collection of poems, was published.
Her other works include Please, take Photographs! a book of poetry and Awam Ngqo! a book of short stories and prescribed for Grade 8; Twelve Books of Folktales - written in both English and Xhosa; translated into isiZulu; Setswana, Afrikaans; Sesotho; Sepedi; and published September 2014 - David Philip; Skin We In in collaboration with scientist Nina Jablonksy and illustrator Lynn Feldman - a book about skin colour and race.
Her children's books include The Best Meal Ever and Life is a hard but beautiful thing: English, Afrikaans. She created the first series for children in isiXhosa: Sigalelekile: 48 books. She contributed more than twenty the books in another series: Siyakhula.
Compilation: You Pay For The View – Maskew Miller Longman
With the Gugulethu Writers’ Group she created Umthi ngamnye unentlaka yawo – short stories - ; UNobanzi ;, UNyana weSizwe 2009 and 2010; and a series of twenty-four books, from her workshop with students at the University of the Western Cape. Two books of poetry, UWC students, will be published in isiXhosa.

Works