Mohale Mashigo

As a musician, she performs under the name Black Porcelain.^[1] Her music is play-listed in 36 countries and debut album, Invincible Summer, won two Wawela Music Awards in June 2013.^[6]

Mashigo's debut novel, The Yearning, was published by Pan Macmillan in May 2016. It has been described as "a bewitching addition to the current South African literary boom...", a story told "with charming lucidity, disarming characterisation, subversive wisdom and subtle humour."^[2] Mashigo says she wrote it "as a story of healing primarily for myself. The entire book is about secrets and how we heal ourselves from our past."^[7] It won the 2016 University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Debut Writing and has been longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2018.^[3]

Other books include Intruders (Picador Africa, 2018), a collection of speculative short stories, and Beyond the River, a novelisation of the film by the same name. She is one of the writers for Kwezi, a comic book series set in contemporary urban South Africa.^[8] She's one of the guests in the french documentary Children of Captain Africa.

Mashigo won the inaugural Philida Literary Award in 2020.^[9]