Gail Dendy South Africa

Gail Dendy has published seven collections of poetry, her most recent being Closer Than That (Johannesburg: Dye Hard Press, 2011). Her first collection, published by Harold Pinter, was Assault and the Moth, Greville Press (UK) 1993. This was followed by People Crossing (Snailpress, 1995), Swimming in the Long Dark Sound (Stride, UK, 1998, Painting the Bamboo Tree (Arc, UK, 1999), The Poetry of Norman Corwin and Gail Dendy (Shirim, USA, 2002), and The Lady Missionary (Kwela/Snailpress, 2007). Gail is married and lives in Johannesburg. Her poetry appears in journals and anthologies both in SA and overseas.

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s Gail pioneered Contemporary Dance in South Africa and was nominated for the inaugural AA Vita Award for Best Performer. She was a Finalist in the South African Science Fiction Society's Short Story competition, 1992; Finalist, Dalro Award 2007, Winner of the 'Playwriting' category, SA PEN Millennium Competition, 2000; and Joint Winner of the cash prize for the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Award, 2008.

She has also been long-listed for the Plough Prize (UK, 2008), shortlisted for the Thomas Pringle Award for Prose (Category: Short Story), 2010, and shortlisted for the EU/Sol Plaatje Poetry Prize 2011. Latest anthologies are: Anthony Astbury (ed) A Field of Large Desires (Manchester: Carcanet, 2010; Liesl Jobson (compiler) The Sol Plaatje/European Union Poetry Anthology 2011 (Cape Town: Jacana, 2011), and Patricia Schonstein Pinnock (ed) Africa, My Africa! (African Sun Press, forthcoming 2012).

Over the years Gail has worked, inter alia, as a university lecturer, copywriter, and radio news writer. She is currently the Information Specialist for an international corporate-law firm.

(2012)