Dianne Hofmeyr

Rooifalkie
by Jill Adams

Dianne Hofmeyr

Author of youth books

Dianne Louise Hofmeyr, née Townsend, was born at Somerset West on 24th September and grew up in Gordons Bay. She studied at the Cape Town Teachers Training College and taught art in Cape Town and Johannesburg. While living in Stellenbosch she worked as a potter. She and her husband now live in London. She has two sons who have both recently moved from Hong Kong to London as well.

Awards:

1988 : Sanlam Silver Award for Youth Literature for When Whales go Free
1990 : Sanlam Gold Award for Youth Literature for A Red Kite in a Pale Sky
1993 : Maskew Miller Longman Young Africa Award for Blue Train to the Moon
1994 : Sanlam Gold Award for Youth Literature for Boikie You Better Believe It
1995 : M-Net Book Prize for Boikie You Better Believe it
1996 : IBBY honours youth novel for South Africa for Blue Train to the Moon
2002: M.E.R. Prize - best children/youth publication in 2001 for The Waterbearer
2004: IBBY HONOURS (International Board of Books for Young Children) for The Waterbearer

Hobbies: design, photography, film, theatre, travel and reading

Favourite authors: Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, Michael Cunningham, Carson McCullers, Peter Carey, Doris Lessing, Michael Ondaatjie and E. Annie Proulx

Books:The Magical mulberry blanket. Tafelberg
The Yellow balloon. Tafelberg
1987: A sudden summer. Tafelberg
1988: When whales go free. Tafelberg
1990: A red kite in a pale sky. Tafelberg
1993: Blue train to the moon. Maskew Miller Longman
1994: Boikie you better believe it. Tafelberg
1995: Do the whales still sing? Dial, New York
1997: The Stone. Frances Lincoln, London, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. Translated into Danish
2001. The Star-Bearer: an Egyptian creation myth. Frances Lincoln, London, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. Translated into Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Spanish, and Swedish.
2001: The Waterbearer. Tafelberg
2003: The Waterbearer. Hodder Headline, London UK
2005:

Fish Notes and Star Songs. Simon & Schuster, London UK
Collections:
Stories in Reading Schemes for second language readers like Hic Hic Hiccups, and Mama Mabena’s Magic, both Cambridge University Press and various others for Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann.
Her stories also appear in collections such as Storyland and Stories South of the Sun.
Adult short stories published by Kwela in the anthologies, Crossing Over, To the Rendezvous of Victory and In the Rapids
Her latest book, The Waterbearer, which won the M.E.R, is set in 14th Century Africa against a background of the dhow trade between Persia, Mogadishu, Zanzibar and Sofala and is interwoven with myth, falconry and the symbolic forces of fire and water. When Maji's father's dhow is wrecked, he is taken hostage by two strange men... one a falconer, the other imbued with evil power. On his journey through the wilderness to the mysterious Kingdom of Dzimba Dzemabwe, he discovers he possesses the power of water divining. In the Kingdom under threat of never making the return journey to the sea and his home, he confronts the evil and the terror of witch-burning and death... as well as life itself.

Reviewer comment:

It is not often one comes across a manuscript that transports you convincingly out of everyday life into an exotic world. The opening passages of The Waterbearer do just that. They enchant with their lyrical tone and the rich and elaborate setting... something of the old magic about sea voyages has been recaptured.

Most of the text by Dianne Hofmeyr, May 2002/2004