Sheila Roberts
Sheila Roberts (1937-2009). Academic, poet, writer of novels, short stories and plays. Some sources state her year of birth incorrectly as 1942.
Contents
Biography
Born in Johannesburg in 1937 and educated in Potchefstroom and through Unisa. For a while in the 1970s was the literary advisor to PACT, later (1977) appointed associate professor of South African and Commonwealth Literature at Michigan State University. Author of poems, stories and novels, including the prize winning collection Outside Life's Feast (1975, winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose).
She made frequent return trips to friends and family and many grandchildren.
She passed away in the USA on 11 August 2009.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
Also the author of the play It’s My Weekend, Too, which (along with Wilma Stockenström’s Die Laaste Middagmaal) won the one-act play competition which was held at The Space in 1972/3 and was performed by them.
She wrote at least two more plays: The Tenants and The House.
She also translated Michel de Ghelderode's play, Magie Rouge, into English.
Sources
Gosher, 1988. [JH]
Astbury 1979.
Book SA [1].
Various entries in the NELM catalogue.
Contemporary South African Plays (ed Ernest Perreira). 1977.
Obituary written by Stephen Gray, Mail and Guardian, 3 September 2009.
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