Darryl Accone (South Africa)

Darryl Accone is a writer, teacher and independent scholar based in Johannesburg . His work includes non-fiction, memoir and fiction and he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Witwatersrand School of Arts.

Accone worked for over 20 years as a reporter, critic, columnist and editor. He observed, reported and analysed the evolving nature of South African society and its creative and performing arts, first as a specialist arts writer at The Star newspaper in Johannesburg from 1988 to 1994 and later as both arts editor and an assistant editor of The Star , from 1996 to 2000. In 1994 he was the founding editor of national film monthly Big Screen and from 1995 to 1999, his weekly Culture Desk column in The Sunday Independent , dissected national and international arts and culture issues. Accone's weekly profiles in the same newspaper featured more than 100 people, including Alan Dershowitz, CNN's Chris Cramer, Alfre Woodard and Lord Carrington. He delivered the annual Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture at the University of Natal , Durban , on 29 May 2003 , on the topic: Passageways: Revisiting Self, The Society of the Spectacle and Moby-Dick in the wake of September 11 .

Accone has contributed to several South African anthologies, including the short story ‘Kum Saan' in From Jo'burg to Jozi: Stories about Africa's infamous city (Penguin, 2002) and the reportage piece ‘There Shall be Art!' in Soweto Inside Out (Penguin, 2004), reflections on the centenary of Johannesburg's satellite city. He has also edited a number of non-fiction works, including Unsustainable South Africa bPatrick Bond and the 2002 Budget Review.

His latest work, All Under Heaven: The Story of a Chinese family in South Africa (2004) has received widespread acclaim from South African critics: Leon De Kock, writing in the Sunday Times Lifestyle noted ‘…it is an extraordinarily mature piece of work - large in conception, poetic in its rendering, epic-romantic in sweep and tone, and intricately embroidered in structure and sequencing.'

Accone is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar, Salzburg , Austria , and of the International Writers Workshop of Hong Kong Baptist University.

Bibliography

All Under Heaven: The Story of a Chinese family in South Africa , David Philip, 2004