Katleho Shoro

Katleho Kano Shoro is a published performance poet and researcher born and based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Katleho Kano Shoro is a published performance poet and researcher born and based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work is a plaiting and probe of some of the threads that exist between the arts, social sciences and other forms of knowledge production – with Africa(ns) always at the centre.

Serurubele (2017) is her debut collection of poetry – with her work also featuring in journals internationally. Katleho has performed nationwide in South Africa, many times participating and facilitating in literary festivals with international reach. Zimbabwe, London and the USA are part of the growing list of countries in which she has been invited to share her work, individually or within a collective – as with the two-week residency in Chicago with the Lingua Franca Spoken Word Movement. Her work in the arts extends to other forms of writing, research, facilitating workshops and managing projects particularly in African literature. Within the visual arts realm, one noteworthy endeavour is the 2017 exhibition, Overtime: representations, values and imagined futures of ‘classical African Art’ that she co-curated and further co-edited the accompanying publication – within her tenure as Research Associate at Wits Art Museum.

Kano holds a Masters’ degree in Social Anthropology, although, en route, she minored in African Studies and majored in Screenwriting as well as Film and Media Studies (University of Cape Town). She has co-written two academic articles focused on African Renaissance (HSRC, 2014) and Pan-Africanism (2011) with Professor Nyamnjoh. The Spoken Word Project: Stories Travelling through Africa is a 2015 publication she co-edited based on a project directed by the Goethe Institute.

Shoro’s current focuses include researching poetry at schools through ZAPP (South African Poetry Project) as well as criss-crossing her theoretical and mediated understandings of aspects of the continent with more experiential, embodied explorations.

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