Featherman comes to life

With sculptor Frans Boekkooi and ‘Featherman’, Boekkooi’s depiction of the Angel in Etienne van Heerden’s novel The Long Silence of Mario Salviati. At the 2012 Karoo Writers Festival, Cradock.

LitNet at the Karoo Writers Festival

The LitNet team at the Karoo Writers Festival 2012 presented the LitNet Schools Indaba and the panel ‘Cultural Crossover: Is it happening?’ In the picture: Etienne van Heerden, Bibi Slippers (LitNet), Russel Kaschula (Director of the School of Languages, University of Rhodes, and author), EKM Dido (the first black woman to publish an Afrikaans novel) and (seated) Peter Mtuze, author and former Head of African Languages at Rhodes University.

Publication to protest fracking in the Karoo: ‘Gifkaroo’

Author Etienne van Heerden, London literary agent and poet Isobel Dixon (Weather Eye, The Tempest Prognosticator) and photographer Obie Oberholzer are working together on a publication to protest fracking in the Karoo. Van Heerden donated the original Afrikaans story, Gifkaroo (a chapter from a forthcoming novel), Dixon translated it for free (Poison Karoo), and Oberholzer contributed a photograph. Gifkaroo / Poison Karoo will be the first publication of Houtstraat Uitgewers, a niche publishing house in Cape Town. A limited, signed print run of only 100 copies will be presented to key players in the petroleum industry and other parties. The book will not be for sale.

Honorary Doctor Litterarum

The University of the Free State presented Etienne van Heerden with a honorary Doctor Litterarum, or DLitt, at its winter graduation ceremony on 15 June 2012. Here he is with the Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, Jonathan Jansen.

At the UFS Graduation ceremony in June 2012 in Bloemfontein – with Prof Hennie van Coller (left) and Judge Ian van der Merwe, Chairperson of the UFS Council.

Supporting emerging writers

Wilna Adriaanse’s ’n Klein lewe, the manuscript of which was completed under the supervision
of Etienne van Heerden as part of UCT’s Creative Writing programme,
has just been published by Tafelberg Publishers.

Etienne van Heerden in Bloemfontein

In the office of Hennie van Coller, Head of Afrikaans, Dutch, German and French at the University of the Free State. The skull used to sit on the desk of the great Sestiger novelist, Etienne (Stephen) Leroux. On the right is a painting of DF Malherbe, a novelist of an even earlier generation. Van Heerden was invited to talk about LitNet and its accredited node for peer-reviewed academic writing in the Humanities, Law and the Natural Sciences, LitNet Akademies.