(Priya Dala)
Durban writer,
Priya Dala has won the accolades of being selected for one of the oldest and
most prestigious Writers Residencies in the world.
The University of
Iowa Fall Writers Residency brings together 20 to 30 of the World’s best-known
writers and has been dubbed “The United Nations of Writers.” Previous
participants selected have been artists such as Pieter Dirk Uys, Miriam Tlali
and Marita Van der Vyver. Since its inception in 1967, the Residency has hosted
25 South African Writers amongst 1400 writers worldwide, and Dala is only the
fifth female writer to be selected. She is also the first female writer from
the South African Indian diaspora to attend the programme.
The programme
includes presentations, podcasts, lectures and literary festivals that Dala
will participate in, travelling across at least six US cities. The highlight
will be an elective in Theatre Writing, where a play written by Dala will be
put on a workshop platform in the United States, and the script will be
fine-tuned with guidance from leading industry professionals in Theatre and
Stage.
The play, written
by Dala is a deconstructed adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet done to the particular Durban Indian context, and it
highlights many social and colloquial themes in the society and the genre of
Theatre.
The play was
narrated and recorded as an audio file. Directed by Caroline Smart, it features
performers Zahir Bassa, Yusuph Kadoo and Tash Reddy in key dual roles. Dala
hopes to bring the play to the Durban stage, once it is refined in the United
States.
Dala’s debut novel What About Meera was published by Umuzi
in 2015. The novel was first prize winner in the Minara Aziz Hassim Literary
Award and was long-listed for the Etisalat Prize, and The Sunday Times Literary
(Barry Ronge) Fiction Prize. She has been featured in the Saraba Magazine,
Nigeria and the novel has been chosen as one of the Top ten African novels of
2015 by Afridiaspora.
Dala has also been
published in the Sentinel Literary Journal, Nigeria, and won first prize in the
Annual Short Story Competition, Texas, USA. Dala has also published an article
in the New York Times, focusing on South African Indian comfort food, and is
preparing further submissions.
She has been second
prize winner in the 2012 True Stories of KwaZulu-Natal, second prize winner in
the Woman and Home Short Story Competition and finalist in the Elle Magazine
Short Story Competition.
Her second novel, The Architecture of Loss has acquired
World English Rights by Pegasus Publishers, New York City, and is currently
being edited for release in 2017.
She is a member of
PEN SA and is represented by the Pontas Literary and Film Agency in Barcelona.
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