Nadia Davids, one of South Africa’s most celebrated, innovative post-Apartheid playwrights, is known for her unique tackling of heavy-hitting political themes with a signature combination of intelligence, nuance, warmth and humour. Her plays, focusing variously on womanhood, Islamophobia, migration, racism, memory and childhood, offer women performers roles of true depth, and to speak powerfully - and intimately - to diverse audiences.

Her theatre works, At Her Feet, Cissie, What Remains and Hold Still have been staged throughout Southern Africa and Europe, and have been nominated, cumulatively, for sixteen Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards.

Nadia has twice won Best New South African Play; for What Remains (2017) and Hold Still (2022) and in 2022 won the Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama.

Nadia’s debut novel An Imperfect Blessing was long-listed for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Award, shortlisted for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize for Literature,  named one of This is Africa’s best African novels and was on the Lonely Planet’s reading list for 2020. Her short stories and essays have appeared in South African and US publications such as The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Scholar, the Mail and Guardian, the Johannesburg Review of Books, Astra Magazine and (forthcoming) in the Georgia Review.

She is an NYC’s Women’s Project playwright alum and has held writing residencies at Art Omi and Hedgebrook and is a 2023 Aspen Writer in Residency.

Born and raised in Cape Town, Nadia has lived in New York City and London and currently lives in Los Angeles.

READ ABOUT NADIA’S ACTIVISM AND ACADEMIA WORK HERE