Zukiswa Wanner is the author of novels The Madams (2006), Behind Every Successful Man (2008), Men of the South (2010), London Cape Town Joburg (2014) and Love Marry Kill (2024); four children’s books Jama Loves Bananas (2011), Refilwe (2014), Africa: A True Book (2019), Black Pimpernel: Nelson Mandela on the Run (2021); a travel book, a satirical nonfiction work and a long form essay on Palestine, Vignettes of a People in an Apartheid State. She is a 2022 Moi University African Cluster Centre Fellow, 2018 JIAS Fellow and 2016 DIVA (Danish International Visiting Artist). Wanner’s accolades include being selected among 2020’s New African 100 Most Influential Africans and Brittle Paper’s Literary Person of the Year in the same year. In 2020, she was the first African and Black woman to win the Goethe Medal from the German government given to artists for contribution to culture. Wanner returned it in March 2024 in protest of Germany’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
She has edited three multinational anthologies. Wanner’s work has been translated into Portuguese, French, Spanish, Arabic and Kiswahili. Wanner has delivered keynote addresses for The Time of The Writer Festival (2020), US’s African Students Association Black Women’s Caucus (2021), East Africa Literary, Cultural Studies (2021) and Einstein Forum (2023).
