Nadia Davids (born 1977) is a South African playwright, novelist, and author of short stories and screenplays. Her work has been published, produced, and performed in Southern Africa, Europe, and the United States. She was a Philip Leverhulme Prize winner in 2013. Her play What Remains won five Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards in 2018. In 2017, Davids was elected president of PEN South Africa, serving in the role until July 2024. Her short stories and articles have appeared in a range of outlets, including The Georgia Review, Zyzzyva magazine, Astra Magazine, The American Scholar, New Writing from Africa (edited by J. M. Coetzee, 2009), Los Angeles Review of Books, the Johannesburg Review of Books, and The Brooklyn Rail. Davids won the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "Bridling", which was described by the chair of judges as a "triumph of language, storytelling and risk-taking".
Early life and education Nadia Davids was born in 1977 in Cape Town, South Africa, where she grew up. She was educated first at Zonnebloem Girls School – one of the oldest, most storied schools in the Cape, located at the edge of District Six – and later at St Cyprian's School. She has recalled: "As a child, performance and reading were my preferred modes of imaginative play. ...I staged lots of plays with my sister and the neighbourhood kids. In my final year of high school, in 1995, I took my first play to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. It was a devised work using South African poetry, projected photographs, dance and narration to chart the country’s transition from Apartheid to democracy". In June 2008, she received a PhD in drama from the University of Cape Town (UCT) for her thesis entitled "Inherited Memories; Performing the Archive", which explored the history, memory and trauma of forced removals from District Six under the Group Areas Act during the Apartheid era in South Africa, through the lens of performance and a pioneering reading of Marianne Hirsch's theory of "post memory" onto the landscape of District Six.
Career Davids held a Mellon Fellowship between 2000 and 2005, and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley (2001) and New York University (2004–05). She was one of 10 playwrights participating in the New York-based Women's Project Theater's Playwrights' Lab for 2008–10. She took up a full-time lecturing position in the Drama Department at the Queen Mary University of London in September 2009. In 2018, she joined the University of Cape Town's English Department as an associate professor, where she lectured until June 2022.
Other activities In July 2017, Davids was elected president of PEN South Africa, taking over tenure from Margie Orford. In 2020, Davids initiated the organisation's podcast "The Empty Chair", which brings together South African and American writers in conversation about literature and social justice, and by 2023, it was among the top 15 per cent of podcasts listened to globally. In July 2024, Davids stepped down as the organization's president, welcoming Bongani Kona as the incoming new president of PEN South Africa.
Personal life As of 2024 Davids lives in Los Angeles, California.
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