Sheila Kohler left South Africa for Europe when she was seventeen, and now resides in New York City, but to this day her writing remains deeply influenced by the harsh landscape and harsher society of her birthplace. Ms. Kohler is the author of two collections of short stories, one of which (One Girl) won the Willa Cather Prize, and four novels, including The Perfect Place, The House on R Street, and Cracks. The latter was chosen by Library Journal and Newsday as one of the best books of 1999. Her latest novel, Children of the Pithiviers, is a grimly enthralling tale of manipulation and debauchery, intertwined with the increasingly significant mystery of the children abducted and murdered by Nazis twenty-five years before. Ms. Kohler's work has been translated and published widely abroad and she has been awarded the O. Henry, the Open Voice, and the Smart Family Foundation prizes. She has taught creative writing at Bennington, the Chenango Valley conference at Colgate, City College, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, the West Side YMCA, and at Montolieu in France.
Born and raised in South Africa, Anne Landsman explores the issues of passion, race, and gender in South Africa with her debut novel, The Devil's Chimney (SOHO Press and Penguin). Connie Lambrecht, a woman dazed by alcohol and haunting memories, becomes obsessed with the story of an Englishwoman who arrived in South Africa in 1910 to run an ostrich farm. In the United Kingdom, Landsman's novel was selected one of the two most notable first novels of 1998 by The Times. It was also nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, QPB's New Voices Award and South Africa's M-Net Book Prize.
Anne Landsman's work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bomb, Poets and Writers, and The Washington Post. She has also written screenplays, which include the motion picture adaptation of The Devil's Chimney, for Africa Media Entertainment and Arena Pictures, and Honest Arrogance, about the life of Frank Lloyd Wright, written with the help of NEA and NYSCA grants.
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by grants from the Bydale Foundation and the Gannett Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.