Koleka Putuma

Koleka Putuma is an award-winning poet, playwright and theatre director. 

​Her bestselling debut collection of poems Collective Amnesia is taking the South African literary scene by storm. Since its publication in April 2017, the book is in its 10th print run and is prescribed for study at tertiary level in South African Universities and Gothenburg University in Sweden. The collection is the recipient of the 2018 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, named 2017 book of the year by the City Press and one of the best books of 2017 by The Sunday Times and Quartz Africa. It is translated into Spanish (Flores Rara, 2019), German (Wunderhorn Publishing House, 2019), Danish (Rebel with a Cause, 2019), Dutch (Poeziecentrum, 2020), Swedish (Rámus förlag). Forthcoming translations: Portuguese (Editora Trinta Zero Nove), and Italian (Arcipelago itaca).

​Her theatre works include UHM (2014) Woza Sarafina (2016), and Mbuzeni (2017/8).  Her theatre for young audiences include Ekhaya  (2 – 7 year olds), and SCOOP: Kitchen play for carers and babes, the first South African theatre work for audiences aged 0 – 12 months old.

​Putuma was appointed as creative director for the 2019 Design Indaba Conference.  She was recently shortlisted as one of four finalists for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative for theatre. She is a Forbes Africa Under 30 Honouree, recipient of the Imbewu Trust Scribe Playwrighting Award, Mbokodo Rising Light award, CASA playwrighting award and the 2019 Distell Playwrighting Award for her play No Easter Sunday for Queers, published by Junkets in February 2020, and played to sold out audiences at the Market theatre in 2019. 

​Koleka Putuma is the Founder and Director of Manyano Media, a multidisciplinary creative company that produces and champions the work and stories of black queer artists and queer life. 

Amy Jephta

Amy Jephta hails from Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town and works variously as a filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter, director and academic.

An alumni of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in New York, Amy has worked as a mentor to community-based theatre groups as part of the Twist Theatre project, has been a voice and acting lecturer at CityVarsity in Cape Town and the Woodward School for Contemporary Art in Vancouver and an invited lecturer at Queens College, New York. She has held fellowships at the Orchard Project Episodic Lab (New York), the AfroVibes Festival (Amsterdam) and the Edinburgh International Festival. As a playwright, her work has been published in South Africa, performed at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, the Riksteatern in Stockholm, and at the Bush Theatre, Theatre 503 and the Jermyn Street Theatres in London. In 2015 and 2017, her writing was directed by Danny Boyle and performed by James McAvoy as part of The Children's Monologues at the Royal Court (London) and at Carnegie Hall (New York).

As a screenwriter, Amy has three feature film credits to her name including the LGBT drama While You Weren’t Looking (2015: Out in Africa) and the biopic Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story (2018: Moving Billboard Pictures). Ellen premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, was selected as the opening film for the Toronto Black Film Festival and was screened at the Afrykamera Festival (Poland), Seattle International Film Festival and Pan African Film Festival (Los Angeles) before its national cinema release. Ellen was South Africa’s official submission to the 2018 Golden Globes for best Foreign Language Film. Amy’s short film, Soldaat (2017), won the Best Script and Best Short Film categories at the KykNet Silwerskermfees. She has staffed on several shows including Trackers (M-Net Channels/CINEMAX) and an African sci-fi series for SHOWMAX, is developing a feature film with God’s Own Country producer, Jack Tarling, and has completed a crime drama pilot for eOne. In 2019, Amy developed an hour-long original drama pilot as part of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Impact program. The Park is currently attached to be produced by Imagine Entertainment.

Amy’s outreach work includes having served as chairperson for Women Playwrights International (WPI), a global NPO that aims to create opportunities and space for women playwrights and currently operates in over 40 territories worldwide. She sits on the advisory board for CASA, an annual award for women playwrights that facilitates connections between writers in Canada and South Africa. In 2015, she co-founded the African Women Playwrights Network, a two year digital networking project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has edited a collection called Contemporary Plays by African Women, released in 2019 by Methuen.

Amy has previously been named as one of the Mail & Guardian's 200 Top Young South Africans, is the 2017 recipient of the national Eugene Marais Prize for Drama, the 2019 recipient of one of South Africa’s highest art accolades, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre and the 2020 recipient of the Baumi Prize (presented by Pandora Film and the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Germany). She now focuses on producing for film and television via her production company, Nagvlug Films, and is in post for her directorial feature debut, Barakat, due for theatrical release in 2020.

Amy is repped by 3Arts and CAA in the US, UK and Europe.

Karen Jeynes

Karen Jeynes is a creator of things. Karen is head writer and producer in charge of development for Both Worlds Productions, where she oversaw ZANews: Puppet Nation (winner of 22 SAFTAs, two WGSA awards for Best TV Comedy, and two time International Emmy Nominee for Best TV Comedy) for four years, as well as Point of Order (SAFTA winner for Best Game Show in 2017), Comedy Central News, and Parlement Parlement, and other projects in development.

As well as her work with Both Worlds, Karen has extensive experience in theatre and television, both writing and producing. Her plays include the multi award-winning Everybody Else (is F*cking Perfect) (Best Comedy 2005), Kiss Kiss, I’ll Have What She’s Having, and Laying Blame, as well as Vaslav, nominated for three Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards. She served as head writer for 90 Plein Street, as well as writing for shows like Thabang Thabong, Vaya Mzansi, and Moferefere Lenyalong. She has written several films for Pixel Perfect Productions, many of them for Mzansi Magic, and has a new film in development with Ikasi Media. She is in demand as a script consultant, researcher, and advisor, working with local and international production companies and channels.

Her adaptation of Thomas Rapakgadi’s The Purse is Mine aired on Bush Radio, and Safm has featured her series Office Hours co-written with Nkuli Sibeko, as well as the radio version of sky too big. Her teenage novels, Jacques Attack (co-authored with Nkuli Sibeko) and Flipside, co-authored with Eeshaam September, were released by New Africa Books. She has a children’s story published in the anthology Metz and Bop and other stories.
She studied Drama and Linguistics at UCT, and obtained her postgrad in The Art of Writing from UWC. She's now studying towards an MA in Writing for the Screen at Falmouth University. She served on the board of Women Playwrights International, and was the President of the International Centre for Women Playwrights for six years.