Lahoucine Aammari

Lahoucine Aammari works as associate professor of literary and cultural studies at Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Beni-Mellal, Morocco. His main research interests encompass studies in travel writing, Moroccan ethnicities, Anglo-Moroccan-relations, and postcolonial literature.

Professor Aammari’s scholarship has appeared in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Journal of North African Studies, Studies in Travel Writing, Hespéris-Tamuda, Cultural Studies, among others. He also co-authored a number of book chapters on travel writing, Moroccan history and Anglo-Moroccan relations.

He is the co-editor of Mirrors of Morocco: Cultural Encounters in Travel Texts, published by Psychological, Sociological and Cultural Studies Laboratory, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah University, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Dhar El Mahraz, Fes, 2023. He is also the author of British Travel Writers in Morocco, 1856-1937: Discursive Encounters (Liverpool University Press, 2026). Aammari is a regular referee of Hespéris-Tamuda Journal.

Louis Botha

The Karoo and his passion for photography set Louis Botha on a journey that has produced a book of beauty.

He has captured the rich diversity of landscapes, old Karoo buildings and the people he has met on the way.

Louis believes landscapes and people go through seasons of change, have different moods and only reveal their real character when there is a proper connection between photographer and the subject.

Louis is a member of Prince Albert’s Open Studios and welcomes everyone to join his workshops.

Angie Butler

Angie Butler was born and raised in Johannesburg, where she worked in film and theatre before going to art school in London in her mid-twenties.

She is the author of several books on polar history including Ice Tracks – Today’s Heroic Age of Polar Adventure and The Quest for Frank Wild – which was turned into a BBC documentary.

She co-authored the acclaimed book Shackleton’s Critic. Her passion for Antarctica led to co-founding the iconic expedition travel company, Ice Tracks Expeditions.

The Shadow of Elsewhere, is her first African story, and is making its debut in Book Town Richmond.

Visit angiebutler.co.uk

Tim Cohen

Tim Cohen is a long-serving South African journalist whose career spans the internal insurrection in the late 1980s, the transition to democracy, and the subsequent politics and finance of South Africa and beyond.

He has worked mainly for Financial Mail and Business Day, and his posts included Political Correspondent, London Correspondent, Finance Editor, and Editor.

He subsequently joined Daily Maverick as Business Maverick Editor, and is currently Senior Editor on Currencynews.co.za.

Darryl Earl David

Darryl David, maverick extraordinaire, is the most experienced pioneer of book festivals in South Africa, having curated more than a hundred over two decades. Many of the festivals are in far-flung areas such as ours in Richmond, our fairytale town, Darryl branded as Africa’s only Book Town in 2007. Darryl also managed against all expectations to have the city of Durban elevated to a Unesco City of Literature and later Hermanus to a Unesco City of Gastronomy. Both Unesco projects were firsts on the African continent. He is also the only Indian lecturer of Afrikaans in South Africa.

It has not escaped us that Darryl also embodies the fluid, imaginative essence of his Pisces zodiac sign, creating a profound irony by founding Richmond, Africa’s only Book Town, in the arid heart of the Karoo desert. Yet, water remains his true spiritual and creative anchor. His early literary career flowed from his home on the banks of the Umngeni River in Howick, where he channeled this aquatic energy into authoring three definitive books on South Africa’s country churches. This fluid inspiration surged again after a seven-year gestation period when a move to Simon’s Town, and a home overlooking the expansive False Bay, triggered a torrent of creativity. In just three short years, this coastal sanctuary birthed two children’s books, a memoir, and two photographic books. At this year’s festival, David adds to this abundant shoal with the tongue-in- cheek title SCRIBBLER, a retrospective of his unpublished journalistic writings spanning two decades, proving that his literary well remains infinitely deep.

Nicole Engelbrecht

Nicole Engelbrecht worked in corporate management for 20 years before moving on to try her hand at creative entrepreneurship in 2019.

She is the creator and host of the popular True Crime South Africa and I Lived Through This podcasts as well as the Showmax official companion podcasts, Devilsdorp, Stella and Rosemary’s Hit List.

She is the author of Samurai Sword Murder: The Morné Harmse Story, Sizzlers: The Hate Crime That Tore Seapoint Apart, Bare Bones: Cold Cases from True Crime South Africa (published in Afrikaans as Klipkoud) and coauthor of Killer Stories: Conversations with South African Serial Killers.

Nicole helps to mentor other South African true crime content creators to help grow the space in an ethical and victim-focused direction.

Gail Gilbride

Gail Gilbride lives with her family in the Hemel en Aarde Valley, where she swims in the sea, writes, gardens and paints.

She set the room alight last year at Boekbedonnerd and we are thrilled to welcome her back. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree (Rhodes) and a post- graduate diploma (UCT).

She taught English, Sound Perception and Communication Skills. She also used to dance and mastering the Tango is still on her wish list.

Gail is the author of Under the African Sun, a top ten finalist in the Author Academy Awards competition (USA) and Cat Therapy, an unplanned memoir. An Unsuitable Woman is her second novel..

Hennie Greeff

Hennie is from Richmond. He is the author of Memoires van ‘n Gatkruiper (Afrikaans) and Adventures of a Tunnel Rat (English), that chronicle an extraordinary international career in tunnelling and underground construction. More than engineering stories, the books are journeys into remote corners of the world that few travellers ever reach and even fewer write about.

Over several decades, Greeff worked on major infrastructure projects across Asia and beyond, often in isolated and challenging regions far removed from conventional tourist routes. His travels took him into little-known areas such as South and North Sulawesi in Indonesia, mountainous terrain, dense tropical landscapes, and communities where Western visitors were rare.

These assignments frequently involved difficult living conditions, political uncertainty, logistical challenges and the ever-present risks associated with underground construction in unfamiliar environment.

Tracy Going

Tracy Going is an award-winning storyteller whose work spans broadcasting, books, film and visual art. A former television and radio news anchor, she is the bestselling author of the Rhymes & Recipes series and the acclaimed memoir Brutal Legacy, which inspired a theatre production and the SAFTA-nominated documentary That’s What She Said. In 2024, she graduated from the Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town adding fine art to her creative repertoire, continuing to tell powerful stories across multiple mediums.

Tracy is currently working on another children’s cookbook and will talk of the power of writing and storytelling as part of her own lived experience.

We are thrilled to have Tracy back with us. She is going to share with us the writing process, its impact and how one might not be able to change our own story but we can give it another shape.

Brahim El Guabli

Brahim El Guabli is chair and associate professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College.

He is the author of the award-winning Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence (Fordham University Press 2023) and of the Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (University of California Press 2025).

Etienne van Heerden

Etienne van Heerden’s books have been published in 14 languages and he has had a long academic career, having retired as emeritus Hofmeyr professor of the University of Cape Town.

As founder-editor of litnet.co.za (including the academic journal LitNet Akademies) and voertaal.nu, he steered LitNet as an early startup (since 1998) during the Internet bronze era and is still managing the output, including acting as managing director of LitNet Akademies NPO, which generates the accredited academic research in the heart of LitNet.

He has been trained as a dog handler and qualified as an attorney, but left legal practice to work in advertising, before turning to academic life. He has worked as lecturer in Legal Practice and Literature Studies for many decades, and as Assistant-Deputy Sheriff for the Bellville Managerial District (civil court).

Robert Hersov

Robert Hersov, 65, is a South African/UK entrepreneur and private investor based in Cape Town (after 30+ years in the US, Europe and mainly the UK).

Hersov’s grandfather, Bob Hersov, founded AngloVaal, one of Southern Africa’s largest mining and industrial companies, which his father, Basil Hersov, ran from 1973 to 2001.

Rob worked for Goldman Sachs NY, News Corp as Rupert Murdochs chief of staff in New York, was on the main board of Richemont, was CEO of Telepiu (Milan), and founded Marquis Jet Europe which he sold to Berkshire Hathaway. In 2020, Rob co-founded an aviation business, RSA.aero, which bought Cape Winelands Airport and Gariep Airport., and he recently bought Trekoskraal (0.4% of South Africa’s coastline).

He is the co-founder of LYRA, an AI sales company, betting exchange business BetMatch, and bitcoin miner BitMach. He co-founded Africa Padel, South Africa’s largest padel company, and Pacific Padel New Zealand, amongst other business internationally.

Rob graduated with a B.Bus.Sci. from the University of Cape Town (1979-1982) and an MBA from the Harvard Business School (class of ’89). He served as an infantry officer in the SADF (1983-1984).

He has devoted much of his time recently to speaking out against corruption, and the inept and kleptocratic South African government and co-founded media company Truth Report. He has a very large social media following.

He is married to Dr. Kate Hersov and has four children, swims in cold oceans and plays golf and padel.

Jake Hoddinott

Jake Hoddinott has worked in roles as diverse as being a game ranger in the Kruger to investment banking in London, from building skyrise office buildings in Johannesburg to running restaurants in the countryside.

From a young age he immersed himself in the landscapes, wildlife, cultures and history of Africa, fuelling his passion for this amazing continent. He confesses to having learnt far less from his degrees in accounting, economics and real estate than he has from exploring the wonders of Africa.

Drawing on real-world experiences and intensive research, Jake writes African historical fiction that brings the region’s past vividly to life. He lives with his wife and three children on a game reserve in South Africa’s Greater Kruger region, writing where the wild is never far away.

Sheryl and Sandy James

Sheryl James is a university graduate with a BA (Health and Social Sciences-Psychology). She is cerebral palsied, passionate about sport, animals and the bush and has a heart for inspiring and creating opportunities for others.

Her faith journey led to an unlikely bronze medal at the 2020/2021 Tokyo Paralympic Games. Her mother, Sandy James, spent thirty years as a school principal and educator at a Christian School. In 2018, Sandy began to journal her new season as Sheryl’s ‘momager’.

Unbridling arose from Sheryl’s public speaking engagements and the journals that she and her mom penned as each of them experienced her own ‘unbridling’.

Hannah Kent

Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide in 1985. As a teenager she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir and was inspired to write Burial Rites.

Hannah is the co-founder and deputy editor of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings, and is completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011 she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award.

Burial Rites is her first novel and has garnered praise from best-selling authors such as Karin Slaughter, Charlotte Rogan, Pulitzer prize-winner Geraldine Brooks and Orange prize-winner Madeline Miller.

Roger Lucey

Born in Durban, Roger started writing and performing songs in the mid-seventies. His first album, The Road Is Much Longer, was banned for possession and distribution, and the security police launched a covert ‘operation’ to silence him. Roger went on to work as a TV journalist covering wars in Southern and East Africa, and later in Madagascar, Bosnia and Chechnya.

After more than a decade, he left the news industry to join Theatre for Africa, an environmental theatre company. He later became editor and presenter of an e.TV nightly arts/news programme for which he received the Arts and Culture Trust Award. In May 2010, he graduated as valedictorian from Duke University’s Graduate School of Liberal Studies. His autobiography, Back in from the Anger, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Alan Paton Award. At the time, his work was featured in the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Modern Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the South African Music Awards.

Roger Lucey survived a covert security police campaign which destroyed his music career. He survived the drug addiction and disaffection which followed. He survived a decade and a half as a cameraman documenting the wars of Africa and Eastern Europe. How to Build a House in the Mountains is a memoir as well as a live solo show featuring stories and songs inspired by the journey.

Melanie Moolman

Melanie Moolman has been part of the De Oude Kraal Country Estate & Spa family for the past 24 years, where her passion for hospitality, people, and storytelling has flourished.

A lifelong lover of books and language, she inherited her deep appreciation for the spoken and written word from her father, the late writer Nico Moolman.

At the Richmond Book Festival, Melanie has the privilege of presenting the release of her father’s latest work that they worked on together, a book of Poetry in Afrikaans and English while sharing memories of the man behind the books.

Through this lecture, she hopes not only to celebrate his literary legacy but also to introduce new readers to his wisdom, humour, and unique perspective on life. By bringing his words to new audiences, she continues a legacy that has shaped her own love of literature and meaningful conversation.

Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit

Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit are the co‑founders of Karoo Space, the independent publishing house that has become one of South Africa’s most distinctive voices on rural life, landscape, and culture.

Drawing on their deep reporting experience, visual storytelling skills, and a shared instinct for narrative, they began documenting the people, histories, and hidden corners of their adopted region.Klein Karoo Magic traces the 350‑kilometre stretch from Montagu to Toorwater Poort, capturing the landscapes, legends, and characters that make the region unforgettable.

The book that finally explains why the Klein Karoo “gets under your skin.”

Suzette Mayr

Suzette Mayr is the author of six novels including her most recent, The Sleeping Car Porter, winner of the Giller Prize, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and shortlist nominee for the Dublin Literary Award.

Mayr’s novels have also won other prizes including the ReLit Award and W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Award. Mayr is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Calgary.

She and her partner live across the street from a park teeming with coyotes.

Deon Meyer

South African crime author Deon Meyer is a former journalist and brand strategist. He has published 17 novels and two short story collections in 28 languages world-wide, and wrote, produced or directed several feature films and TV series.

Accolades include Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière (France), the Deutsche Krimi Preis, the Swedish Martin Beck Award, and a Barry Award in the USA. Deon lives in Stellenbosch with his wife Marianne.

He is passionate about South Africa, Mozart, mountain bikes, cooking, and Free State Cheetahs and Springbok rugby.

Naomi Morgan

Naòmi Morgan is a research fellow at the same university and continues her parallel career as a literary translator specializing in texts from French into Afrikaans. She has a predilection for drama; many novellas (such as Die Ander Dogter, Madame Pylinska en die Geheim van Chopin, Oskar en die Pienk Tannie and Monsieur Ibrahim en die Blomme van die Koran) have been adapted for the stage by her or by other theatre-makers.

Both translations discussed at Boekbedonnerd 2026 (Ons wag vir Godot, Die Ander Dogter) are published by Naledi and have been performed at arts festivals. Both both awards for best drama text.

The translator was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic for her contribution to making French literature and culture accessible to South African audiences.

Anthony Osler

Antony is the author of three books on Zen in South Africa; Stoep Zen, Zen Dust and Mzansi Zen and is working on a fourth due out soon (haha!).

A veteran of literary festivals with his friend Darryl David, Antony will tell stories and read from old and new material.

Books aside, he lives on a farm in the Karoo with his wife Margie, where they run both wool sheep and Zen retreats and where they sit on the stoep in the evenings to watch the sun go down. (stoepzen.co.za)’

Cate Otto

Cate Otto (b. 1993) is a Johannesburg-based ghostwriter, philosopher, bookfolder, and the host of a series of creative bookfolding workshops. A PhD candidate at the University of Johannesburg, her academic work is concerned with the aesthetic qualities of urban informality in the city. She is also the editor-in-chief of a short-form philosophy magazine, SideQuests Magazine, and she writes regular articles for platforms such as Elephant Journal and Substack.

In her free time, she enjoys reading, knitting, and hanging out with her dog, as well as folding, compiling, and curating artefacts that are capable of celebrating the written word.

Clinton V. du Plessis

Clinton V. du Plessis was born in Cookhouse; a small railway town in the Eastern Cape. He is an accountant and is currently residing in Nxuba (previously Cradock).

To date he has published 15 collections of Afrikaans poetry, 1 English as well as a Dutch translation.

Becky Cerling Powers

Becky Cerling Powers is a retired feature writer and parenting columnist for The El Paso Times and other publications nationwide, author of the nonfiction narrative Forbidden Orphanage Outside the Forbidden City; the children’s picture book Wherever I Go: Psalm 139 for Kids; and a book of parenting insight articles Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive , as well as compiler-contributor-editor of My Roots Go Back to Loving (El Paso family stories).

She blogs at www.beckypowers.com

Shamila Ramsookbhai

Shamila Ramsookbhai earned her PhD ( Education- University of Kwa Zulu Natal ) and has served as a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). She is an NRF scholarship holder, as well an AERA scholar. In 2023 she presented 7 papers at the AERA conference in Chicago.

Alongside her scholarly pursuits, Ramsookbhai is deeply engaged in the arts, particularly in the field of ceramics. She is the founder of The Eat, Play, Clay Club, a home-based pottery studio in KwaZulu-Natal that doubles as both an artistic space and a therapeutic environment.

Beyond academia and ceramics, Ramsookbhai is also a writer. Her writing often blends personal experience with broader cultural and social reflections, weaving narratives that are both intimate and universal. Fiction My Milkshakes Bring All the Boys to the Yard and Other Short Stories (Micromega Publications, 2025) EAT,PRAY,DIE (Micromega Publications, 2026} Non-Fiction I wore my Reeboks and embraced risk in a doctoral study.

Neeljie Swanepoel

Neeljie Swanepoel is a academic researcher specializing in autothanatographical life writing, with a focus on how the consciousness of mortality, aging, and transience intersects with literary creation.

Her thesis investigates Antjie Krog’s Plunder, examining how the acute awareness of death generates a heightened sense of disruption that, paradoxically, acts as a catalyst for productivity.

Her work explores how this death consciousness and its external contingencies drive the representation of multiple self-constructs within life writing.

Through this analytical lens, she charts how structural and personal disruption forces a re-evaluation of established personal and ideological narratives, particularly regarding an individual’s ethical responsibility towards others.

Stephen Symons

Stephen Symons was born in Cape Town in 1966. He has published award-winning poetry and short fiction in local and international journals, magazines and anthologies.

Symons’s work has been shortlisted for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, the Ingrid Jonker Prize, and a South African Literary Award, and he was most recently awarded the 2026 Olive Schreiner Prize for Poetry. Symons has published five collections of poetry and two collections of short stories. Starlorn is his debut novel.

Symons holds a PhD in History (University of Pretoria) and an MA in Creative Writing (University of Cape Town). He lives with his family in Oranjezicht, Cape Town, where he runs a graphic design studio.

Kathy Du Toit

Kathy Du Toit is an independent historical researcher with a passion for South African history and genealogy.

She has time transcribing and researching a remarkable collection of nineteenth-century Richmond family letters, preserving the stories of the district’s early settlers and bringing their experiences to life through archival research.

Her work explores the history of the Karoo, early farming families, and local communities. Kathryn lives in the Eastern Cape, where she continues her healthcare career while pursuing historical research and sharing the rich heritage of Richmond with wider audiences.

Dietloff van der Berg

Dietloff Van der Berg established and taught creative writing in Afrikaans in Pietermaritzburg where he lectured on literature at the university.

Since retiring as professor in 2010 he focussed on his poetry with Rumi: Liefdesverse en aanhalings in 2024 and Feesmaalgang in 2025 published by Naledi and now his new insightful poems and quatrains.

Apofatiese lens (Apophatic lens) is the new anthology of Dietloff van der Berg’s poetry spanning fourteen aspects of life. Each rubric contains a major poem then followed with quatrains centred around that theme.

It portrays the unique vision of the poet’s journey through life in a well-structured and creative volume of poems.

Caitlin Venniker

Caitlin Venniker is a South African vet and award-winning author.

She spends her time between South Africa and the Middle East, and she has a collection of rescue animals, including a scruffy desert dog and a one-eared cat. Unleashed is her first book.

Paul Weinberg

We are honoured to have Boekbedonnerd host the premier of Paul Weinberg’s ‘Singing across the Divide’, an epic documentary that recounts the bringing together of two communities, Muizenberg and Vrygrond through singing.

Paul Weinberg is a photographer, curator, filmmaker, writer, educationist and archivist. He began his career in the early 1980s by working for South African NGOs and photographing current events for local and foreign newspapers.

He has produced 21 books as a photographer and author in his own right and been published in many anthologies and group projects. He won the Mother Jones Award in 1993 for a project on the Fisherfolk of Kosi Bay. He recently completed a retrospective book and exhibition called Between the cracks.

He is presently the curator for the Photography Legacy Project plparchive.com

Together with David Goldblatt, he founded the Ernest Cole Award for photography in South Africa.

See – www.paul-weinberg.co.za for detailed CV and exhibition history