Meet our Authors

Bontle Senne is a book blogger and literacy advocate. She wrote her first short story at 6 years old and her first book review at 9 years old. Bontle is a former managing director at the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, a trustee of READ Educational Trust and a part owner of feminist trade publishing house Modjaji Books. Even though it was a long time since she was 16, her favourite books are still books for teens. She has spoken around the world in Congo-Brazzaville, Germany, France and, of course, South Africa about African children’s books and reading.

Dianne Case primarily writes children’s picture books and youth novels. Her books are used extensively in South Africa’s schools and have been translated into all 11 official languages as well as German. She has won numerous local and international awards for her writing. Dianne is committed to helping others tell their stories: she volunteered as a writing facilitator at Pollsmoor Prison for more than 10 years and continues to mentor new writers.

Jayne Bauling is a prizewinning writer of many youth books, having won the 2012 Gold Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature, the 2011 Maskew Miller Longman literature award for novels in English and the 2009 Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa, amongst others. She is also the author of Soccer Secrets, the 9th book in Cover2Cover’s Harmony High series.

Sello Mahapeletsa is a writer and a teacher, presently employed as Head of Department at Shapo Primary School in Mangata village, Limpopo.

Undergraduate LLB degree at the University of the Western Cape at the end of 2015. He’s a performance poet, and writes a blog, What’s poppin’ e-Kasi?, for FunDza Literary Trust. Taking Chances is his first novel, and it brings him one step closer to achieving his ultimate goal: creating tales that amaze and educate readers.

A journalist and labour commentator, Terry Bell is author of several books, including Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth. He co-authored Fordsburg Fighter: the journey of an MK volunteer (ISBN 9780994674425) with Amin Cajee
in 2016.

Zimkhitha Mlanzeli grew up in Port Elizabeth where she started studying engineering at NMMU, but decided that wasn’t where her passion lay. While working in a call centre, she discovered the FunDza Literacy Trust on Mxit, and, as a regular poetry writer, decided that she wanted to explore her writing more seriously and sent in her story which was published on the FunDza mobi site. She now works for FunDza in a full-time capacity mentoring other aspirant writers.