Germanic Languages and Literatures
Antjie Krog
University of the Western Cape
Williams Hall, rm. 440
The South African writer Antjie Krog was born in the Free State in 1952. She completed a BA degree at the University of the Orange Free State, a Masters degree in Afrikaans at the University of Pretoria and a Teacher's Diploma at the University of South Africa (UNISA).Krog's first collection of poetry, Dogter van Jefta (1970), published when she was only 17, was followed by many further collections, including two books of verse for children and the English collectionDown to My Last Skin (2000), which won the inaugural 2000 FNB Vita Poetry Award. She became well known as one of the SABC radio journalists who reported on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in the mid-nineties. Prose publications include Country of my Skull (1998), about the TRC, A Change of Tongue (2003), and Begging to be Black (2009).
She has increasingly become interested in translation, both of her own work and that of others. Verweerskrif (2006) or Body Bereft (Körper Beraubt in its German incarnation) was published simultaneously in English and Afrikaans by Umuzi, Random House's South African imprint. Most recently, her collection Mede-wete (translated as Synapse) has been awarded the Hertzog Prize, the most prestigious award for literature in Afrikaans. Her 1989 volume, Lady Anne: A Chronicle in Verse, which also won the Hertzog Prize, has just been published in translation by Bucknell University Press.
In addition to the Hertzog Prize, Antjie Krog has received numerous awards for journalism and translation and several honorary doctorates. For her journalistic work she won the Pringle Award and the Foreign Correspondent Award. She has received the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award and was honoured by the Hiroshima Peace Foundation. Her works have been translated into English, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Arabic.
Krog is married to architect John Samuel. They have four children and live in Cape Town, where she is a Professor Extraordinary at the University of the Western Cape.