Bridget Pitt

Bridget wrote her first poem when she was seven, about the death of a dog. Her parents failed to keep it - her first lesson in the fickleness of readers. Undeterred, she discovered an enormous old typewriter in the cupboard under the stairs, and over the years filled her bedroom drawers with diatribes of dubious eloquence. Her first published writing was more prosaic - a story about cold storage workers who lost heir fingers to frostbite, for a newspaper called Grassroots, which was produced by Cape Town’s black communities as an organizing tool in the anti-apartheid struggles. She has published a cartoon strip, poetry, short stories, children's stories, novels and text books. Her second novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize and the WOle Soyinka African Literature prize, and her short story was short listed for the Commonwealth Prize. Her first novel, Unbroken Wing, was written in the sleep-starved daze of early motherhood, and draws on on her experiences in the anti-apartheid struggle. The Unseen Leopard, published after 12 years of procrastination and feverish rewriting, investigates the murky world of genetic engineering. Her next novel is due for release in September 2015. Bridget lives in terror of her publicist, Kennedy, who is an autocratic Chihuahua.