Zainub Priya Dala is a therapist and full-time writer. She has published short stories and articles in the literary fiction genre in various newspapers and magazines in South Africa, including The Natal Witness, Marie Claire, Elle Magazine, Woman and Home Magazine and The Post.
She has been second prize winner in the 2012 True Stories of KwaZulu Natal, second prize winner in the Woman and Home Short Story Competition and finalist in the Elle Magazine Short Story Competition.
Zainub has also been published in the Sentinel Literary Journal, Nigeria, and won first prize in the Annual Short Story Competition, Texas, USA.
She has first published a debut novella "Mystical Realms" via Chamberton Publishers, California, USA in 2012, and it has received strong, positive reviews.
Zainub has worked in collaboration with Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed on a contribution to the book Chatsworth, The Making of a South African Township. The issues of the South African Indian diaspora is a key theme in her writing and social commentary, focussing primarily on women, children, the elderly and the differently-abled.
Having obtained a certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, Zainub's completed full length novel, What About Meera is due for official launch in March 2015 by Penguin Random House Struik, Umuzi. The novel tells the tale of Meera, a young woman of South African Indian descent, born and brought up on a sugar cane farm in a small town in Northern KwaZulu-Natal. Meera escapes a life of abuse on the sugar cane farm, and flees to Ireland where she hopes to find peace. But, a doomed affair and the death of a child finds Meera descending into chaos and mental illness.
Professional proof-readers of the novel have called it "a devastating new piece of writing told with the voice of a South African Indian woman - a voice not heard often" ; and "This author can write. She has a gift for words. The language is almost Joycean, and ironically for a novel partly set in Dublin, it has a feel of Ulysses about it".
Zainub hails from the very world she richly describes in her writing. The rural sugar cane plantations, the tiny villages are the places of her history. She has worked closely with the empowerment of women, most especially the women of the farm, and has attempted always to tell their stories. Stories so rich in emotion, those dusty stories hidden away in cupboards and chests in old tin farm houses.
Her greatest passion is telling stories. Stories of truth, but told lyrically.
She has been second prize winner in the 2012 True Stories of KwaZulu Natal, second prize winner in the Woman and Home Short Story Competition and finalist in the Elle Magazine Short Story Competition.
Zainub has also been published in the Sentinel Literary Journal, Nigeria, and won first prize in the Annual Short Story Competition, Texas, USA.
She has first published a debut novella "Mystical Realms" via Chamberton Publishers, California, USA in 2012, and it has received strong, positive reviews.
Zainub has worked in collaboration with Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed on a contribution to the book Chatsworth, The Making of a South African Township. The issues of the South African Indian diaspora is a key theme in her writing and social commentary, focussing primarily on women, children, the elderly and the differently-abled.
Having obtained a certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, Zainub's completed full length novel, What About Meera is due for official launch in March 2015 by Penguin Random House Struik, Umuzi. The novel tells the tale of Meera, a young woman of South African Indian descent, born and brought up on a sugar cane farm in a small town in Northern KwaZulu-Natal. Meera escapes a life of abuse on the sugar cane farm, and flees to Ireland where she hopes to find peace. But, a doomed affair and the death of a child finds Meera descending into chaos and mental illness.
Professional proof-readers of the novel have called it "a devastating new piece of writing told with the voice of a South African Indian woman - a voice not heard often" ; and "This author can write. She has a gift for words. The language is almost Joycean, and ironically for a novel partly set in Dublin, it has a feel of Ulysses about it".
Zainub hails from the very world she richly describes in her writing. The rural sugar cane plantations, the tiny villages are the places of her history. She has worked closely with the empowerment of women, most especially the women of the farm, and has attempted always to tell their stories. Stories so rich in emotion, those dusty stories hidden away in cupboards and chests in old tin farm houses.
Her greatest passion is telling stories. Stories of truth, but told lyrically.