It would have been Bessie Head’s 70th birthday in July 2007. Some of her many readers from around the world have decided that this anniversary is a call for celebrations and have agreed that these will be held in four southern African places where she lived and worked: Serowe and Gaborone in Botswana; Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town in South Africa.
As Bessie Head was born in Pietermaritzburg and spent her childhood there, the colloquium at the Centre for African Literary Studies in Pietermaritzburg will have its main focus on childhood and its presence in her autobiographical and fictional writing.
We hope that the colloquium will begin with a conversation between Patrick van Rensburg, the founder of Swaneng School and one of Bessie Head’s long-standing friends in Serowe, and Gillian Stead-Eilersen, the author of the Bessie Head biography, Thunder Behind Her Ears.
To commemorate this event, we have designed a special Bessie Head bookmark. Contact us if you would like to have one.
