Zakes Mda is a South African writer, painter and composer and is a Professor in the English Department at the University of Ohio. He has won many awards, including the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. His novels include Ways of Dying (OUP 1995) and Black Diamond (Penguin South Africa 2009). He is a director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Johannesburg and loves vegan cooking.