About

I am a writer, teacher and researcher based at the University of Cape Town, where I am Associate Professor and head of English Literary Studies. My focus is on southern African, postcolonial and world literatures, together with life writing, narrative nonfiction and the environmental humanities. Currently, I am collaborating with UCT's Neuroscience Institute on ‘Writing Forgetting’, a project exploring the literature of dementia and memory loss. I also write about visual art, sound studies and music.

I have published two essay collections, Firepool (Kwela, 2017) and Show Me the Place (Jonathan Ball, 2024), as well as a study of life writing and the South African transition, Experiments with Truth (African Articulations series, James Currey, 2019). My work has appeared in the New Statesman, Financial Times and Harper's magazine, among others. The Interpreters: South Africa’s New Nonfiction, an anthology co-edited with Sean Christie, will appear in May 2025.

I live in Cape Town with my wife, the writer Anna Hartford, and our two daughters.

Contact

A.C. Jordan Building      
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701
South Africa                                                    
hedley.twidle@uct.ac.za                                

Department of English Literary Studies                           
Environmental Humanities South                       
Archive and Public Culture
Neuroscience Institute
 
i was born 24 february 1980 in johannesburg                 
i found myself in a situation