Long Story Short: The Writing Life of Sheila Roberts

Abstract

In a publishing career within South Africa dating from the 1970s, over the next three decades, Sheila Roberts (1937–2009) consistently evaded oversimplified readings of her work, especially in the short-story form, and in her verse. For most of her later professional career as a teacher of “creative writing” in the United States, she defied literalisms, dispatching back to her country of birth challenging versions of “home truths” and increasingly using devious narratorial techniques, even in her novels, becoming a major innovator in the literature of the English-speaking subcontinent.