Photo Credit: Brooke Fasani
Margie Orford has been elected President of PEN South Africa by the institution’s executive committee with effect from June 19. She succeeds Anthony (Tony) Fleischer, who was president for many years and died after a short illness on June 5 at his home in Cape Town. Margie was Vice-President of PEN South Africa for many years.
Margie is an award-winning journalist, photographer, film director, children's author and Fulbright scholar. Born in London, she grew up in southern Africa. She was detained as a student activist during the State of Emergency in 1985 and wrote her finals in prison. She lives in Cape Town, and is Patron for the children’s book charity, the Little Hands Trust and for SA RapeCrisis.
Her concern about violence against women is reflected throughout the Clare Hart series, published in the UK by Head of Zeus and Harper Witness in the US. It has also been published in France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Russia and the Czech Republic, and rights have also been sold in Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
Praise for Margie Orford and WATER MUSIC:
‘Margie Orford writes with great human insight, at times with poetic beauty, and always the ever-present deep, dark undertow of menace.’ – Peter James
'Orford plots so brilliantly that to stop reading is as harrowing as to carry on.' – Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph
‘Clare Hart is back, and she returns in style… the tension racks up, and up, and up… WATER MUSIC should see Orford win many, many more fans, and she’s not exactly short of them already. Read it.’ – The Big Issue
‘I loved the twists and turns of this book and the truly unknowable nature of the next chapter’ – Lizzi Thomasson, The Bookseller
‘Margie Orford gives genre writing swagger, she makes it look good…every detail in WATER MUSIC convinces. Every sentence is clipped, pared down, muscular, every emotion captured with poise and precision. WATER MUSIC is Orford’s best work yet.’ – Jonathan Amid, Slipnet