To keep it simple, Duduzile Mabaso, 34, describes herself as a creative.
And it’s easy to see why: she is a writer, editor, designer, publisher and bookseller.
Mabaso founded online magazine Poetry Potion in 2007 to showcase pan-African and, more recently, international poets, and in 2011 she created her own publishing company, Black Letter Media (BLM).
At high school, she and her friends would write themselves into story poems in which they dated celebrities (Usher was her boyfriend at one point). She started performing in the early 2000s, including at the Grahamstown Festival. But when the nerves became too much, she decided to stick to writing.
BLM recently published print editions of Poetry Potion as well as four novels. They were mainly sold online, of course, as it’s not easy for an independent publisher to compete against the big names for shelf space. Poetry Potion and BLM are self-funded with the money that Mabaso makes from her other passion, TV scriptwriting.
She has worked on household names, like Muvhango and other scripts for the SABC.Ultimately, she wants her television and literary careers to sit under her own umbrella company, but for now, she’s enjoying where the storyline is taking her.
Find Mabaso on Twitter: @uzamantungwa
