Sylt Foundation and stimmen Afrikas at Allerweltshaus Cologne are starting a new Residency exchange programme for writers from Germany and South Africa in 2015

Two writers meet, exchange their works and introduce the foreigner into the versatile worlds of Cologne and Johannesburg. Each year a German writer will travel to Johannesburg and a South African writer will travel to Cologne to meet, share works and take part in the cultural life of the two cities.

The first two Rhine-South Africa-Fellows will be Luxemburg writer and Cologne resident Guy Helminger, who will be in Johannesburg in September 2015 and Captonian writer Rachel Zadok, who will be in Sylt/Germany and Cologne in September/October 2015.

Rachel Zadok was born in Tel Aviv in 1972 and raised in Johannesburg. She has a National Diploma in Fine Arts. In 2001, she escaped a career in advertising to become a writer, which she describes as being a little like running away to join the circus without the safety net. 

In 2005, she was a runner-up in the Richard & Judy How to Get Published Competition and her first novel Gem Squash Tokoloshe was published later that year. Gem Squash Tokoloshe was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the IMPAC award. 

In 2011, she launched Short Story Day Africa, an initiative to highlight African short fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Observer, the Jewish Chronicle, the Independentand African Violet, the 2012 Caine Prize Anthology. 

Rachel lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter, and occasionally blogs.