Housing Works Bookstore Café hosts a reading with Gabeba Baderoon, Yvette Christiansë and Nadia Davids

Housing Works Bookstore Café hosts a reading with Gabeba Baderoon, Yvette Christiansë and Nadia Davids on Thursday, June 7 at 7pm. Three South African women whose writings offer diverse views, understandings and representations of place, nation, belonging and womanhood. Together they present an unforgettable contribution to the South African literary landscape, and bring the diverse experiences of south African women to an American audience.

Gabeba Baderoon’s poetry is often a narration of leaving home, assuming the life of an exiled adult, and negotiating her sense of self against the backdrop of a world demanding explanations for identity. An extract of Nadia Davids’ play explores notions of home, loss, mourning, nostalgia and exile, all evoked in an attempt to recover the ephemeral landscape of District Six in Cape Town. Yvette Christiansë examines the history of South African slavery in her epic poetry.

Gabeba Baderoon is the author of The Dream in the Next Body (Kwela/Snailpress, 2005) and A Hundred Silences (Kwela/Snailpress, 2006). She received the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry 2005. The Museum of Ordinary Life, her short collection of poems and creative non-fiction, was also published in 2005. Her poetry has been published in several languages, and in many anthologies.

Nadia Davids is an acclaimed playwright and director; the recipient of two A.W. Mellon Fellowships and the winner of the Fleur du Cap Award for Best New Director in 2003. She has written and directed four plays, Khumbula (1995), Doc’s Wife (1999) The Butterfly and the Wog (2000), and At Her Feet (2002) – which received international acclaim while touring Southern Africa, Holland and during two stagings in NYC.

Yvette Christiansë is a novelist, poet and scholar. She was born and raised in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Mbabane. Her book of poems Castaway was short-listed for the PEN International Poetry Prize 2001. Her novel, Unconfessed is based on the life of a Cape Colony slave woman (Other Press, November 2006). Her poetry, prose and scholarly writing have been published in South Africa, Australia, Canada, France and the USA.

PRESS QUERIES ONLY CONTACT: Chaya Thanhauser, Special Events and Marketing, Housing Works Bookstore Café: 212-966-0466, X1104 or Thanhauser@housingworks.org.

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Housing Works Bookstore Café

126 Crosby Street (one block east of Broadway between Houston and Prince)

Subway: W, R to Prince; B, D, F, V to Broadway/Lafayette; 6 to Bleecker
General Information: (212) 334-3324
Housing Works Bookstore Café Fighting AIDS One Book At A Time

Housing Works Bookstore Café is an independent cultural center that offers patrons a unique opportunity to join the fight against AIDS and homelessness. Arts-based philanthropy in practice, we allow visitors to make a difference simply by buying or donating books; eating at our cafe; coming to concerts, readings, and special events; or volunteering for our staff.

We are a non-profit organization that relies entirely on donations to stock our store and volunteers to run it. All proceeds directly benefit our parent organization, Housing Works, Inc., the nation’s largest minority-controlled AIDS service provider. Housing Works provides housing, healthcare, job training, and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. As an activist organization, we are committed to implementing the systemic changes necessary to ensure that AIDS and public health policies are sound in concept and equitable in administration.