Living While Feminist Jen Thorpe

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Rumbi Goredema Görgens. Rumbi is a Zimbabwean-born South African-based feminist author and activist. Her writing has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Vela Magazine, and on FeministsSA.com and MyFirstTimeSA.com. She has worked with various South African civil society organisations, and her current day job is at Embrace, a movement dedicated to making mothers and motherhood matter in South Africa, in benefit of women who mother and the children they raise. Rumbi is the proud and exhausted mother of Samuel (7 going on 18) and Miriro (3).

So today I’ll be talking with Rumbi about making motherhood matter.

A quick update to say that my real mom life has got in the way of recording and sharing this week's episode. It'll be out later this week.

Today on the podcast I’ll be speaking with Lauren Beukes.

Lauren  is the award-winning author of six novels, a collection of short stories, a pop history about South African women, and New York Times best-selling comics. Her work has been translated into 26 languages. Her novel, The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer and the survivor who turns the hunt around is now a major AppleTV series with Elisabeth Moss who listeners may know from the Handmaid’s Tale and Mad Men.

Lauren is a former feature journalist, who covered electricity cable thieves, HIV+ beauty pageants, metro cops and homeless sex workers. She’s worked in film and TV, as the director of Glitterboys & Ganglands, a documentary which won Best LGBTI Film at the Atlanta Black Film Festival, and as showrunner and head writer on South Africa’s first half hour animated TV show, Pax Afrika, which ran for 104 episodes on SABC.

Her work has been hailed by the likes of Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, George R.R. Martin. She has won several awards over the last ten years, including The Arthur C Clarke Award, The University of Johannesburg Prize, the Strand Critics Choice Award, The Kitschies Red Tentacle, The August Derleth Prize, RT Thriller of the Year, Exclusive Books Booksellers Choice Award and the prestigious Mbokodo Award for women in the creative arts from South Africa’s Department of Arts and Culture.

When asked where she gets her ideas from, Lauren responds “Everywhere. Conversations, observations, watching the cultural shifts and fracture points and weirdnesses in the world. The inside of my head is less a memory palace and more of a hoarder house; full of strange and useless things that sometimes, if I’m lucky, come together in interesting and surprising ways.”

One of these interesting and surprising novels is her latest – Afterland. The story of a mother and son on the run in a post-pandemic America. The pandemic, known as The Manfall means that twelve year old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs – especially from her own sister. This feminist, high-stakes thriller is a blend of many genres and the perfect post-pandemic read.

Lauren lives in London with her teenage daughter, two trouble cats and a lot of plants.

So today I’ll be talking with Lauren about post-pandemic motherhood, feminism, and literary success. Welcome Lauren.

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Megan Ross.

Megan is a writer, creative consultant and journalist.

She is the author of Milk Fever (published by uHlanga Press in 2018) which is a collection of poetry. In Milk Fever Megan writes about the uneasy truths of unexpected motherhood and all its emotional detritus. It explores the choices and misadventures of young womanhood, centering the personal as political in a feminist and bold poetic style.

She is also the author of several short stories and essays that have gone on to achieve critical acclaim. She is a recipient of the Brittle Paper Award for Fiction (2017) and an Alumni Award for the Iceland Writers Retreat in Rekyavick. She was also the finalist in the Gerald Kraak, Miles Morland, Short Story Day Africa, and Short.Sharp Awards.

Megan has worked in the book industry on both the copy and art aspects of book production for publishers across the African continent. She left her features writer role at Glamour magazine to pursue a career in freelance writing in journalism in Bangkok. After returning to South Africa her writing has featured in New Frame, Mail and Guardian, Glamour, Brittle Paper, GQ, Prufrock, Catapult, New Coin, New Contrast and the Kalahari Review. As a freelancer she ran her own visual and communications studio and created work for a wide range of clients including Lil-Lets South Africa. Megan is the contributing editor at Isele Magazine.

Megan has a Bachelor of Journalism and Media Studies degree and now works in advertising full time at Retroviral.

So today I’ll be talking to Megan about motherhood, poetry, and the importance of telling our stories.

Today on the podcast I’m speaking with Sarah Lotz.

Sarah was born in the UK, lived in Paris, Israel and spent 20 years in Cape Town. She returned to the UK 5 years ago and is currently living on the Welsh borderlands. She’s an ex mural artist, now lucky enough to be a full time screenwriter and novelist.

Sarah has published 20 novels that have been translated into over 25 languages. She’s done this on her own and as part of collaborative writing teams including with Louis Greenberg (under the name S.L Grey - hard core horror novels), Helen Moffett and Paige Nick (under the name Helena S Paige - 'choose-your-own adventure style' erotica novels ;)) and her daughter Savannah Lotz (under the name Lily Herne - zombie YA fiction).

Sarah claims to have too many rescue dogs – if that’s even a thing – and is an animal rights and environmental activist.

Sarah’s latest novel is called Impossible, and it’s a tale of romance that is fantastic and just a little bit different from the one you might expect.

Sarah has a daughter – Savannah – who is 30, and a step daughter, known to the family as little Sarah – who is 32.

So today I’ll be talking with Sarah about feminism, parenting, writing, and hopefully a bit about the environment. Welcome Sarah.

Today on the podcast I’m speaking with Sara-Jayne Makwala King. Sara-Jayne is an award winning radio presenter, best-selling author, journalist, and public speaker whose career spans two decades and four continents.

She has an LLB honours degree from the University of Greenwich and a Masters in Journalism from Canterbury University.

Her first book Killing Karoline, published in 2017, was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize for South African Writing. Her second book, Mad Bad Love, was published this year, talks about the period in her life when Sara-Jayne had just discovered she was going to become a mother. Six weeks after discovering she was pregnant, her partner Enver relapses on heroin and disappears. Sara-Jayne checks herself into The Clinic and realizes that she must save herself to save her future child, and that part of this journey must be tackling why she’s always looking for love in all the wrong places. Both of her books deal with issues around race, identity, adoption, addiction, recovery, and mental health. Mad Bad Love is currently number one across many bookstores in the country.

Sara-Jayne’s daughter, is turning three this November. They live in Cape Town, where Sara-Jayne hosts her own weekend breakfast show on Cape Talk radio.

So today I’ll be talking with Sara-Jayne about parenting herself and her child, as well as addiction, adoption, and of course, feminism.