“In 2020 I was working on Charlotte (a sequel to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice told from the perspective of Charlotte Lucas). I had a two-book deal, was paid an advance in pounds – something that does not happen for South Africa writers. Book tours were planned, I had slots at book fairs, and a well-known actress had been chosen to do the audio book,” said Helen Moffett. “Overnight everything went pear-shaped. I became one of the first middle-class South Africans with COVID and later Long COVID. Everything was cancelled. The pandemic stole everything. Long COVID erased every trace of who I was – I couldn’t read, write, work – and I am my job. I fell into a black, white and grey world in which years passed.”
“And that was not all: on 12 December 2020, my sister got COVID and spent 65 days in pre-vaccine ICU. We couldn’t speak to her (she was in a coma most of the time) or see her, and only knew at the very end that she would live.”
Editor, writer, poet, teacher and scholar, Moffett’s career has spanned the post-apartheid publishing, writing and book industry to date. She has worked with some of the African continent’s brightest literary and academic writers, including Lauren Beukes, Zakes Mda, Ivan Vladislavić, Sarah Lotz, Thando Mgqolozana, Diane Awerbuck, Gabeba Baderoon, Ade Adebajo, Nadia Davids, Jacqui L’Ange, Nechama Brodie, Fiona Snyckers, Petina Gappah, Elinor Sisulu, Jamala Safari, Nick Mulgrew, Liesl Jobson, Adam Habib, Amina Mama and Sindiwe Magona. She has also written and published two collections of poetry, erotic fiction (with Sarah Lotz and Paige Nick), the novel Charlotte and multiple other genres ranging from a cricket book with Tim Noakes and Bob Woolmer to a series of green handbooks on water and waste-saving. She was the first post-1994 development editor who worked with texts for multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multicultural readers in South Africa, and has produced wide-ranging academic and non-fiction work on sexual violence and other topics.
“My tombstone should probably say ‘She was easily bored’ or describe me as the Forest Gump of South Africa literature,” she laughed. “I stumble into extraordinary opportunities almost by accident. I know I am good at what I do, but, for example, Zakes Mda’s first book landed on my desk by accident. I’ve worked on many books that have won prizes and national accolades. Many writers have started their careers with me. I particularly get huge pleasure in supporting entry-level writers.”
Under construction
In her STIAS presentation she focused on and read extracts from her current works in progress – her fourth collection of poetry, We Must Caution You, which encapsulates the memories and emotions of her sister Kathy’s 65 days in COVID ICU – “the title comes from words repeatedly spoken to us by her doctors”, as well as from her memoir commissioned by Karavan Press in 2019. “The idea was to combine a history of an exceptionally turbulent and exciting period in publishing history in not only South Africa, but anglophone Africa, with the practical experience and insights I’d gathered after 35 years straddling the academic and publishing worlds. A South African version of Diana Athill’s Stet, if you will,” she explained. “But the pandemic had other ideas and helped itself to four and a half years of my life. That, and the experience of almost losing my sister, meant that I began to think about memoir as a response to mortality in intimate, immediate and concrete terms. I also started thinking of alternative chronologies and patterns in the telling of stories, both in the poetic (fictional) and memoir (non-fiction) forms.”
“The COVID experience has unexpectedly given me a chart to follow into a memoir of my life as an editor and a writer. Following these new and unfamiliar routes means abandoning the usual chronology of the memoir form, and finding surprise connections and interweavings,” she continued.
The work thus far has drawn her to the myth of Persephone in the underworld and Demeter’s grief-stricken pursuit of her lost child, as well as to Hecate – “the half-witch, half-Goddess” in trying to process the pandemic years. “Now I find myself wanting to reframe those myths to chronicle the healing cycle that has been enabled in my months so far at STIAS: not only the direct benefits of being part of this generous and loving cohort of Fellows, but in gaining new perspectives on the richness of the authors and projects I have been lucky enough to work with in the past decades.”
“I have come to realise that writing a memoir is not so much about salvaging the past as a form of building new futures, as well as creating confidence in those futures. I hope to share how some of the experiences I’ve had with authors and individuals intersected with my sister’s spell in the underworld in ways I did not expect: and the transformative, reintegrative and restorative paths forward they continue to offer.”
She also discussed some of the challenges that come with memoir writing – “the anxiety of narcissism should affect all memoir writers. But, also how to write without reliving the PTSD. I fully immerse myself, but how do you survive the process?”
“Unlike my editing where I need distancing to not muddle their voices with my own,” she added.
She also spoke of the fun experience of writing female-empowering erotica. “If you want to bond with your friends, write erotica together,” she said. “Ours is empowering erotica in reaction to 50 Shades. They are novels about women’s experiences which require freedom and power, freedom to make sexual choices and to feel safe in a non-judgemental space where there is no shame. Women of utopian agency, who are full control and never rescued by a man. They were also in response to my earlier work on sexual violence – when I was still naïve enough to think I could change the world, and that sexual violence could be eliminated by the time my nieces reached adulthood.”
“You have no idea how wholesome it felt to write sexual fantasies in which the heroine was always safe and in control,” she added.
She ended by describing the impact of the STIAS experience on her health and Long-COVID recovery. “STIAS is the Narnia for academics. It offers an opportunity to play as adults.”
“I keep doing things for the first time in four or five years. They are both deeply familiar and yet for the first time. This fellowship might well resurrect my career. I feel seen, heard and valued.”
“I often say that I have the best job in the world, and this has been affirmed as I’ve been picking up and reconstructing the fabric of my life as a writer and editor, someone who finds herself as passionately committed to nurturing African publishing projects as before,” she concluded.
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photography