South African women short story writers

Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".

Margaret Bakkes (14 December 1931 – 29 June 2016) was a South African writer.

Farida Karodia (born 1942) is a South African novelist and short-story writer.

Elsabé Antoinette Murray Joubert OIS (19 October 1922 – 14 June 2020) was a Sestigers Afrikaans-language writer. She rose to prominence with her novel Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena, which was translated into 13 languages, as well as staged as a drama and filmed as Poppie Nongena.

Zoë Wicomb (born 23 November 1948) is a South African-Scottish author and academic who has lived in the UK since the 1970s. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for her fiction.

Pauline Janet Smith (2 April 1882 – 29 January 1959) was a South African novelist, short story writer, memoirist and playwright.

Lauren Beukes (born 5 June 1976) is a South African novelist, short story writer, journalist and television scriptwriter.

Diane Awerbuck is a South African novelist. Her novel, Gardening at Night, won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, best first book (Africa and the Caribbean), and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. In 2011, her collection of short stories, Cabin Fever, was published by Random House Struik. Her novel, Home Remedies, was published by Random House Struik in August 2012. She was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2014, and won the Short Story Day Africa competition the same year.

Nadia Davids (born in Cape Town) is an award-winning South African writer. Her work has been published, produced and performed in Southern Africa, Europe and the United States.

Colleen Higgs (born 1962 in Kimberley, South Africa) is a South African writer and publisher. As a writer, she has published poems and stories in literary magazines in South Africa since 1990. As a publisher, she is both renowned and respected as the founder of independent publishing house, Modjaji Books.