South African poet (born 1957)
Makhosazana Xaba (born 10 July 1957) is a South African poet and short-story writer. She trained as a nurse and has worked a women's health specialist in NGOs, as well as writing on gender and health. She is Associate Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg.[1]
Biography
Makhosazana (Khosi) Xaba was born in Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to Glenrose Nomvula Mbatha and Rueben Bejanmin Xaba, the second of five children.[2] She has an MA degree in creative writing from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) and is working on a biography of Noni Jabavu.
Xaba won the Deon Hofmeyr Award for Creative Writing (2005) for her unpublished short story "Running".[2] Her poems have appeared in publications including Timbila, Sister Namibia, Botsotso, South African Writing, Green Dragon and Echoes,[2] and have been collected in These Hands (2005)[3] and Tongues of Their Mothers (2008). A book of her short stories, Running and Other Stories, was published in 2013,[4] and won the 2014 Nadine Gordimer South African Literary Awards Short Story Award.[5]
Xaba is editor of the 2026 anthology Like the Untouchable Wind: An Anthology of Poems, about "the life, experience and visions of African lesbians".[6][7]
She is also a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[8]
With Athambile Masola, Xaba introduced the book Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home, a collection of Jabavu's Daily Dispatch columns, published in 2023.[9][10]
