Koa’s

online
Creative
Writing
Workshop
30 Nov - 4 Dec

Blog Writing
Competition

10 Amazing
Speakers
 RO G R A M M
P Thursday, 30 Nov E
Welcome & Mark Anderson is
House Rules the Principal and

Mark Anderson Co-founder of Koa

Academy Online Break
08:15-08:45 School 08:45-09:00

Beth Peterson is a conceptual copywriter and brand storyteller with more than 30 years
of experience in business writing. She works closely with leadership, marketing and PR
PR, teams to help develop and define communications strategies and implement
Copywriting & communications campaigns. As a business writer, she is responsible for crafting a wide
Ghostwriting range of outputs including brand stories; marketing and advertising copy; SEO webcopy,
blog and social media posts; media releases and advertorials; newsletters and emailers;
Beth speeches and scripts. She is also a ghostwriter for business books, opinion columns and

Peterson
thought leadership articles. What she loves about her work is the diversity. She writes for
clients across many industries including tech & ICT; retail, CPG & e-commerce; wine,
tourism, travel & hospitality; healthcare, wellness, coaching, psychology & personal
09:00-09:45 development; parenting & women; leadership, entrepreneurship & SMEs; financial services;
sports, recruitment, education, non-profit sector and the arts.

Break
09:45-10:00

Shirmoneyde Lange is a writer and performance

poet hailing from Elsies River on the Cape flats.
She predominantly writes in Kaapse Afrikaans Poetry
and is committed to telling (and retelling)
stories of marginalized and dispossessed Shirmoney
people of colour. Her debut collection, Nommer
20 Delphistraat, was published in 2016. She holds de Lange
a BA (Hons) in Afrikaans from the University of
the Western Cape and has gone on to become
10:00-10:45
an Afrikaans teacher.

Break
10:45-11:00

Majozi is a South African singer and songwriter. He rose

to prominence in 2013 when he released his first EP,
‘Marvelous Light’. The track went to number 9 on the
Writing Lyrics South African iTunes chart and resulted in him being
signed with Universal Music South Africa. His follow-up
Majozi album ‘Fire’ debuted in the iTunes Top 3. He has worked
with internationally acclaimed artists such as The
Lumineers and Mango Groove. He received a SAMA
11:00-11:45
nomination for Best Adult Contemporary Album for Fire
and in 2019, he recorded with the Soweto Gospel Choir
who won 3 grammys.
 ROG R A M M
P Friday, 1 Dec E
Gabriella Pinto is a writer and film director from Cape Town, South Africa. Traversing fiction and
journalism, she is interested in telling stories about the human condition. Over the past decade of
writing, and sometimes directing, in the film, video, TV, and digital space, she has helped agencies and
Writing Dialogue production companies deliver information, creative, entertaining, and actionable content. Gabriella has
also penned plays, as well as written and directed several films. Her short documentary, The Leg-Maker,
Gabriella Pinto was nominated for Best Female Director at the international My RØDE Reel Short Film Competition, which
she produced after completing a scholarship to the University of Cape Town’s Stepping Stone
08:15-09:00 documentary filmmaking program. As a playwright, Gabriella won the first inaugural Scribe Scriptwriting
Competition for her play, Chickens, while her work, Eden, was published by Oxford University Press. The
theater production received a Fleur du Cap nomination for Best New Theatre Director and later toured to
the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, the largest event of its kind on the African continent.

Break
09:00-09:15

Marvin Charles is a Metro Reporter for

Journalistic News24 based in Cape Town. He has
reported on major local and national
Writing stories across the country, among them the
Marvin Cape Town Water Crisis, the long drawn-

Charles
out land restitution saga involving
claimants from District Six fighting for their
return, and being on the frontline covering
09:15-10:00 Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutus’s
death and the fire that ravaged Parliament.

Break
10:00-10:15

Marida Fitzpatrick is a publisher at Penguin Random House

South Africa and a published author. She has published
bestselling titles like Steinhoff and The Bosasa Billions and Publishing
was the commissioning editor of the explosive exposé Truth
to Power by André de Ruyter. Before she started her Marida
publishing career, she was an award-winning journalist for
Media24. She has written four books, including a work of Fitzpatric
non-fiction about the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. She has
an honours degree in journalism and a master’s in creative
10:15-11:00
writing, both cum laude.

Break
11:00-11:15
Diana Ferrus is a South African writer and storyteller. Her work is published
in Afrikaans and English. Ferrus leads writing workshops in Cape Town while
working as an administrator at the University of the Western Cape. Ferrus is
Poetry best known for her poem about Sarah Baartman, a South African woman

Diana
taken to Europe under false pretenses and paraded as a curiosity. She
wrote the poem in 1998 while studying at Utrecht University. The popularity

Ferrus of this poem is widely believed to be responsible for the return of

Bartmann's remains to South Africa. The poem was published into French
law. Ferrus is a founder of the Afrikaans Skrywersvereniging (ASV), Bush
11:15-12:00
Poets, and Women in Xchains. She has a publishing company called Diana
Ferrus Publishers and has co-edited and published a collection of stories
about fathers and daughters.
 ROG R A M M
P Monday, 4 Dec E
Getting Practical:
Workshopping
Creative writing
Are you ready to put what you have learnt
into practice? It is time to flex your creative
writing muscles. Join a Koa Academy Pod
Teacher in a practical creative writing
session. During this session, you will have the

Koa Academy opportunity to practice some of the skills that

you have learnt during the last few days in a
smaller group setting.
08:15-09:00

Marcelle Pincus is the co-author of the bestselling

English Handbook and Study Guide. For twenty years
Editing she has been the facilitator of the Crawford
Preparatory schools. Her workshops have been
Marcelle presented in Welkom, Maputo, Manchester, New

Pincus Zealand and throughout South Africa. Her own life

story, What if Nobody Comes, has been performed in
Grahamstown, The Mandela Theatre, Pretoria and
09:00-09:45 Durban. She is a drama examiner at the South African
guild and has been teaching at various institutions for
more than 60 years.

Break
09:45-10:00

Originally from New York City, Stephen Francis is an award-winning writer, best
Humorous
known as the co-creator of South Africa's most popular satirical cartoon strip
and TV series, Madam & Eve (International Rose D’Or winner). In addition to Writing

Stephen
writing 30 episodes of Madam & Eve - the live action series, his television
writing credits include Zero Tolerance, Bay of Plenty, Scandal, Soul City and
Durban Beach Rescue. Stephen’s feature films include Pets (George Hamilton),
Dazzle (Jeff Fahey) and the horror-thriller Slash (Steve Railsback). In addition, Francis
Stephen has worked with Leon Schuster on several of his movies, and was also
10:00-10:45
head writer on two episodes of Comedy Central's South African Celebrity
Roasts, hosted by Trevor Noah and Jimmy Carr.

Break
10:45-11:00

Lauren Beukes is the award-winning author of six novels, a

collection of short stories, a pop history about South African
Fiction women, and New York Times best-selling comics. Her work has
been translated into 26 languages and won prizes across

Lauren genres from the Arthur C Clarke Award to the Strand Critic’s
Choice award and the University of Johannesburg Prize. Her
Beukes novel, The Shining Girls, about a time-traveling serial killer and
the survivor who turns the hunt around is now a major AppleTV
11:00-11:45 series with Elisabeth Moss. Her latest novel, Bridge, about a
young woman’s search for her mother across realities is out
now. She lives in London with a daughter and two cats.

*Subject to Change