The 2014 Commonwealth Poet, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers still can't quite believe it. A former actress who knew she'd have to write her own script, starting with Where the Children Live (runner up, National Script Writing prize), Original Skin and the forthcoming Riding Out the Water. She has three poetry collections (The Everyday Wife won the SALA award 2011), edited No Serenity Here, an anthology of African poetry translated into Mandarin, as well as Change, a special edition of the Atlanta Review devoted to South African women poets, and contributed to the award-winning, ground-breaking Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Poets. She has performed and read her work on three continents. She teaches creative writing at Wits University.

Photo by Chris Denns Rosenberg

Read Villers' poetry here