Novelist Margie Orford joins the Department as Writer in Residence

Posted on 28 April 2015

The distinguished South African Novelist Margie Orford joins the Department as John Tilney Writer in Residence for the Summer Term 2015.

Margie Orford

Margie Orford is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her Clare Hart novels – a literary crime fiction series that explores violence and its effects in South Africa – are published in the USA and the UK and have been widely translated into more than ten languages. They include Like Clockwork (2008), Blood Rose (2009), Gallows Hill (2001), Daddy's Girl (2012), and Water Music (2013). They have led to her being described by The Weekender as the ‘queen of South African crime-thriller writers.’

She is also an award-winning journalist who writes for papers in the United Kingdom and South Africa. Apart from her fiction, she writes regularly about crime, gender violence, politics and freedom of expression, and literature. She has written a number of children’s books and several works of non-fiction on subjects ranging from climate change to rural development.

She was born in London to South African parents, but grew up in Namibia and South Africa where she was educated at the University of Cape Town. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1999 and has Masters in Comparative Literature from the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

She is a member of the executive board of PEN International, the president of PEN South Africa, the patron of Rape Crisis and of the children’s book charity, the Little Hands Trust. You can follow her on Twitter on @MargieOrford. You can find out more about her at www.margieorford.com

Margie Orford will be giving a reading of her work at 6 pm on Wednesday 29 April in the Bowland Auditorium. All are welcome.