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Sarah Britten |
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| Sarah Britten was born in Johannesburg on
31 August 1974, and grew up in Sandton.
She obtained a BA (Dramatic Art) and Master's degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. As a student she was actively involved in student politics and edited the alternative student magazine, Agitate, which won an award from the Mail & Guardian in 1996. For a while she also wrote Wits Student's notorious Nurden column. |
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| Her first published story
was about buying a Matric Dance dress when she was 17, and since then she
has freelanced for various publications, including Denis Beckett's now
defunct Sidelines, The Sunday Independent, Sunday Life
Lifestyle, and Style.
As far as the Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature is concerned, 2002 (Welcome to the Martin Tudhope Show) is second time around for Sarah: in 2000 she won the Silver Prize for The worst year of my life, so far, which will soon be published in Germany by the publishing giant Bertelsmann. After working in advertising for two years, she resigned to devote herself to finishing her PhD thesis, on the mythology of the new South Africa in advertising. She says about Welcome to the Martin Tudhope Show, "Writing an 'upbeat' story for teenagers is always a challenge, since adolescence is meant to be a time of angst. I also felt that to write a positive story in a South African setting without at least acknowledging the tremendous challenges the country faces would be a bit of a cop-out. So I hope that in this novel I have succeeded in capturing the anarchy of family life within a setting that includes references to the many ambiguities of life in South Africa today. While there is a strong element of realism, however, the book is designed to be entertaining, and the more people laugh when reading it, the happier I'll be." Sarah lives in Johannesburg with her husband, André.
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