Jayne Bauling
Jayne was born in England but grew up in South Africa. After many years in Johannesburg and 17 women's fiction novels published in the UK, a move to White River, Mbombela in Mpumalanga, coincided with an exploration of new writing directions - youth fiction, short stories and poetry. Her YA novel E Eights won the 2009 Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa, Stepping Solo was awarded the 2011 Maskew Miller Longman literature award for novels in English, and Dreaming of Light won the 2012 Gold Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature and was chosen for the 2014 IBBY Honour List. Her youth short story Dineo 658 MP won the 2009 MML silver medal, while This Ubuntu Thing was shortlisted for the inaugural Golden Baobab award and The Saturday Dress was shortlisted for the same award in 2014. In 2011 she also won the inaugural African Writing flash fiction prize for Settling. She has twice been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Another youth novel Our Side of the Wall was shortlisted for the Sanlam Prize. Her adult short stories have appeared in The Bed Book of Short Stories (Modjaji Books), The Edge of Things (Dye Hard Press), African Pens 2011 (Jacana), Feast, Famine & Potluck (Short Story Day Africa), the e-anthology Behind the Shadows, and (the stories An Inappropriate Woman and Witch and Bitch)in the People Opposing Women Abuse Breaking the Silence annual anthologies (Jacana). Rage and Misfortune, her retelling of the OT Samson story was published online by Ludic Press. Poetry: Symbiosis won SAFM's Express Yourself prize, Fist was placed 3rd in the 2008 POWA Women's Writing Project and published in Murmurs of the Girl in Me, while Unschooled was published in POWA's 2010 anthology Stories of the Othere(ed) Woman and The Ladies Take Tea in POWA's 2012 anthology Sisterhood. More poetry in ouroboros review, Markings, poetandgeek, Ons Klyntji, Litnet and the Lowvelder.
Her latest novel is Soccer Secrets (Cover2Cover Books).
Visit her Facebook page Jayne Bauling Writer or follow her on Twitter @JayneBauling
“If she had learnt any lesson today it was that men were stupid, helpless creatures made needlessly cruel by their terror of showing their feelings.”
“I've been thinking. You'd better be my bridesmaid, since you gave me the idea that led to this whole farce. It's a horrible job, I'm sure, so you deserve it. Plus, you're my friend. Will you do it?”
“Oh, this time I was doing the gossiping. You should really dismiss me for disloyalty, not to mention the disrespect I'm showing right now by talking to you like this.”