Magogodi oaMphela Makhene completed Part I of a multi-part debut novel while in residence. The section she wrote in New Jersey Studio deals with themes tackling the beginnings of New England, European colonization, and the first non-native resident of Manhattan, Juan Rodriguez. She also revised sections of her debut short story collection, Innards (Norton), interwoven stories spanning the early days of apartheid South Africa and beyond. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and Guernica. She was nominated for the 2017 Caine Prize in African Writing. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was named a Truman Copote Fellow and won the David Relin Prize for Fiction.
Portrait by Matt Obst
