These are difficult days. Stephen Watson, director of the company , man of energy and vision, is desperately ill. Our thoughts go to him and his young family, and his recovery. (Since then - Stephen Watson died on Sunday the 10th of April 2011.  Our sincere condolences to his family)

The volume and quality of new writing in the country and continent, though warming and encouraging, is not translating quickly enough into new subscribers of the magazines. While the kind donor is much valued, further measures, to better match income to costs of this journal, are necessary. The e-Subscription is a new income stream of promise; we are active in that market. 

Many writers subscribe, but not all contributors. We are changing the rule for contributors: in future, the contributor must also be a subscriber of either the hardcopy issue or the electronic version, to be published in New Contrast.

In this issue, we bring you the imagination and art of 44 contributors, local and international; some familiar, others new to us. We have the usual healthy crop of poems, short stories and a book extract. I hope you will find something of interest to your taste.

Abigail George studied film and television production for a short while. She is a writer and poet. She has been published in print and online. Storytelling for her has always been a phenomenal way of communicating  with other people.

Akwe Amosu was born in London, raised in Nigeria and has lived and worked as a journalist in west, east and southern Africa, as well as in the UK and the US. She currently advocates on African issues for the Open Society Foundations in Washington, DC. Her first book of poems, "Not Goodbye" was published by Snail Press, Cape Town in late 2010.

Anne-Marie Moore is a teacher, writer and calligrapher. Her love of the written word and creativity encourages her students to uncover their untapped talents. Nature is inspiration for much of her creative and documentary work. Anne-Marie enjoys music, travel and interacting with people of different cultures.

Belinda Clur was raised with strong scientific, academic and creative influences. Having worked in the corporate world for several years, and having lived in London, she returned to South Africa to establish a commercial property research business. Belinda greatly enjoys the literary and art worlds, and now makes more time for these. She is deeply grateful to her mother, Denise Clur, who provides a constant source of inspiration.  

Carla Chait was born and grew up in Johannesburg. After school she read her BSc at Wits, majoring in Physiology. In 2005 she moved to Cape Town to complete a two- year Dietetics post- graduate degree at UCT. Carla is now back in Johannesburg doing  community service for Dietetics at the Johannesburg Hospital.

Chad Pressman was born in a small Idaho town in 1981.  He got in trouble when he was 16 and spent two years bouncing from hospitals, to lock-downs, to rehabs.  Upon release, he spent a year in Louisiana trying to fit himself into a more socially acceptable way of life.  He found it empty, so he started wandering.  Chad has spent the last eight years hitchhiking, hoping trains, walking, driving and motorcycling: traveling the wilderness, cities and towns, anywhere.

Christo Snyman works in the retirement funds industry in Johannesburg as a research and marketing manager. He enjoys reading, gardening and gym. He likes literature with revenge as its theme and is very fond of the poems of Emily Dickinson.

Consuelo Roland has published a novel called  The Good Cemetery Guide and several short stories. In 2007 her essay entitled ‘Was Ayn Rand Wrong?’ was selected for inclusion in The Face Of The Spirit, a century of essays by South African women. After leaving her career in the IT industry, she completed a Creative Writing Masters degree at the UCT and is now a full-time writer.

Dawn Garisch has had five novels and poetry published. Two novels are out in the UK, with a third in press. Trespass was nominated for the Commonwealth prize. Her non-fiction work and a poetry collection Difficult Gifts will be published by Modjaji this year.

Denise Clur attended the Johan Carinus Art Centre, Grahamstown. She has a BSc from Rhodes, with Hons in Chemistry from Wits which lead to Physical Science school teaching and lecturing at JCE, Johannesburg.  Denise completed first year BA (Fine Arts) at Wits in 1967. She attended classes in painting, sculpture, etching and ceramics when possible, and has exhibited. Two of her short stories appeared in Contrast in 1974.

Dianne Stewart has a BA (Hons) in African Languages, a MA in South African Literature from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a MA in Creative Writing from UCT. She writes full time and teaches Creative Writing in the Durban area. She has published more than twenty books including her recent compilation 'Durban in A Word', a collection of writings on the city.

Don Pinnock has been an engineer, political scientist, criminologist, legislator, travel writer, photographer and editor. These days, after realizing he’d been focusing on only one species among millions on the planet, he prefers the job of nature writer and poet.

Elisa Galgut teaches in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cape Town. Her current area of interest is an exploration into emotional responses to literature from a psychoanalytic perspective. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT.

Fern GZ Carr is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, lawyer and teacher. She composes poetry in five languages and has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to New Zealand. The Parliamentary Poet Laureate has recently selected her poem, “I Am”, as Poem of the Month for Canada. 

Gus Ferguson is a poet, cartoonist, publisher and pharmacist.

HA Hodge is a poet and editor. He hosts the Off-the-Wall poetry gigs in Kommetjie and Kalk Bay.

Heidi Breetzke is the mother of two energetic, rapidly developing pre-teens. She runs the English Department at a private school in the Eastern Cape.  Poetry and photography are her personal passions. Photographer, Marlene Neumann has had the greatest influence on Heidi.

Herman Lategan is a freelance journalist and writer; previously with Style Magazine, Fine Music Radio and e.tv. He lives in Cape Town.

Herman Manson is a freelance business journalist and media commentator. His writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines locally and abroad on topics ranging from new media to marketing and technology. He is based just outside Cape Town on a farm near the foot of Sir Lowry’s Pass.

Jana van Niekerk is an artist, actress, psychologist, poet and writer of fiction who is interested in performance art. She holds a DPhil from Stellenbosch University. She lives in Scarborough with her dog, her partner and his three children. She is expecting her first baby, a boy.

Jeanne Hromnik has worked for many years in South African publishing, as a book editor, commissioning editor and manuscript reader. She was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and lived and worked in Syracuse, New York, where she received a masters degree in journalism from the Newhouse School of Journalism, before coming to Cape Town.

Jeffrey Murray is currently completing his PhD in Classics at the University of Cape Town.

Jenna Mervis is a freelance writer and designer. She lives in Cape Town. Jenna studied Journalism at Rhodes University and obtained her Masters in Creative Writing at UCT. She is currently completing her first novel.

JKS Makokha is a Kenyan writer living in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Reading M.G. Vassanji: A Contextual Approach to Asian African Fiction (2009) and co-editor of a new volume on African literary criticism, Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore (2010) with Jennifer Wawrzinek. His poetry has been published in journals such as Atonal Poetry Review, African Writing, The Journal of New Poetry, Postcolonial Text and Stylus Poetry Journal.

Johan Geldenhuys is a semi-retired financial terminologist who divides his time between business dictionaries and poetic fiction. He hopes to marry these in a new genre of gratis verse.

Justin Fox is editor-at-large for Getaway magazine. His articles and photographs have appeared internationally in numerous publications and on a wide range of topics, while his short stories and poems have appeared in various anthologies. He is a two-time Mondi journalism award winner (1999 and 2004). His recent books include Cape Town Calling (Tafelberg, 2007), Under the Sway (Umuzi, 2007),  Africa Lens (Jacana, 2009) and The Marginal Safari (Umuzi, 2010).

Karen Jayes won the 2009 PEN/Studzinski Literary Award for a story entitled 'Where He Will Leave His Shoes'. She lives in Cape Town, where she teaches in the journalism department at City Varsity School of Media and the Creative Arts. She is currently working on her first novel.

Klara du Plessis is a poet and librettist resident in Montreal and Cape Town. Currently she is completing her MA English Literature at McGill University. She works as coordinating editor for Scrivener Creative Review, and founded Writing Pamphlet, a publication commenting on the poetic process through medium of poetry itself.

Kobus Moolman teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. He has published three collections of poetry: Time like Stone (which received the Ingrid Jonker Prize for 2001), Feet of the Sky, and Separating the Seas. His play, Full Circle, won the 2004 PANSA award, and was published by Dye Hard Press last year. He has also published a collection of radio plays, Blind Voices (Botsotso Publishers).

Lara Salomon has been writing since the moment she was able to hold a pen. She has one older sister. They get along.

Len Verwey was born in Maputo. He lives in Cape Town and works for a democracy NGO. His poetry has been published in New Contrast, New Coin, London Magazine, A Look Away, and Carapace.

Lindsey Gillson was born in the UK. She moved to South Africa in 2006 to take up a post as lecturer in Plant biology and conservation at the University of Cape Town.

Lise Day has retired to Hout Bay after 40 years teaching English most recently at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. She is a Member of the 'Pleached Poetry' writing circle. Her short stories are published in the English National Curriculum text book, and various periodicals, and poems in Carapace. In 2010, she presented 'States of Emergency', a paper exploring poetic responses to the Aids crisis in South Africa at a symposium on Poetry and Medicine at Warwick University.

Marike Beyers lives in Grahamstown, where she works trying to keep track of various forms and formats of words and sentences.

Mea Lashbrooke lives in Cape Town, is married with several children and teaches English in Cape Town and abroad.

Michael Bihl studied Journalism at the University of Pretoria and went on to do his honours in English. In the future, he plans to travel, study some more, and hopefully wind up writing full-time. In the meantime he enjoys reading, running and writing.

Michael Copley was a poet, singer/songwriter and actor. A regular at Off-the-Wall poetry gigs in Observatory, Michael died unexpectedly last December. He has two poetry/meditation/prayer CDs out: one, Messages from trees, and the other, a collaboration with Guy Gibbon, Meditations from Africa.

Michael King lives in Rondebosch and teaches English at Bishops. He has had poems published in New Contrast and other journals, and has self-published a collection of poems called “The Fool”. Over the years he was involved in editing English Alive during the 1980s and New Contrast during the 1990s and 2000s.

Nick Purdon is a graphic artist and poet.

Norman Morrissey taught Eng. Lit. at a few universities, and has published poetry in journals in the UK, the USA and in South Africa. He has four books of poems in print. He lives in Hogsback, sharing a 5 acre plot with 72 species of birds, a troop of Samango monkeys, the odd bushbuck and duiker, and a few thousand trees.

Rick de Villiers is an assistant lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. His MA dissertation on TS Eliot’s quatrain poems (Poems 1920) is in the final stages of submission. Rick is also a freelance journalist.

Romaney Pinnock is a traveller. Anytime she has the means to go somewhere, she books a ticket. She recently completed an 800km pilgrimage across northern Spain, volunteered on a cetacean research vessel in the Straits of Gibraltar and has spent many years living in the heart of Tuscany. Apart from all these adventures, she is currently completing her PhD in genetics at UCT.

Yvette Morey was born in Vereeniging and has the public library to thank for her sanity. She studied English and Psychology at Rhodes University before moving to the UK. She works as a researcher and lives in Bristol.