Masande Ntshanga has been appointed editor of New Contrast Magazine. The journal, which was established in 1960, is one of South Africa’s oldest surviving journals. Its mission is “publishing the best of poetry and prose, art, reviews and interviews from both local and international authors.”

Ntshanga is the author of the novels The Reactive and Triangulum. He counts among his honors the 2018 Betty Trask Award, the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award, and a Fulbright Award. He was also a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015, and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, n+1, and MIT Technology Review, among other venues.

When asked in an interview about his new role, Ntshanga said:

It means that, despite everything, like everyone else across the world, we have to pull together and forge forward despite the present disaster. As a literary journal, New Contrast is an instrument that aims to facilitate communication between writers and readers; as well as between writers and other writers, which I feel is needed. For the first time in the 21st century, humankind hasn’t only been pushed back into its warrens, we’ve been forced into inhabiting the same psychological terrain as we endure them. Here, for example, deaths are reported each hour and we’re isolated and afraid, surrounded by the threat of totalitarianism. It’s tragic, but it’s also an opportunity to foster greater empathy and ingenuity: a challenge for the world’s population, a challenge for writers and readers, and a challenge for New Contrast.

Read the full interview here. Congratulations on this new position, Masande Ntshanga!