A'Eysha Kassiem is an award-winning South African writer and editor. She has worked as a journalist for almost two decades, managing newsrooms in South Africa and abroad. She is a fellow of the German-based International Journalists Programme as well as the US State Department's International Leadership programme, which recognises leaders in their respective fields. She has a Masters degree in Journalism from the University of Stellenbosch.
Her debut novel, Suitcase of Memory, was the joint winner of the University of Johannesburg's South African national debut fiction award. It was long-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Award as well as the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences national book award. She is presently working on her second novel and is an alumni of the Miles Morland Foundation for Creative Writing.
During her career as a journalist, Kassiem served as News Editor at both the Cape Times and News24, South Africa's biggest online news platform. Kassiem has also served as the Editor of News24 Business, SA’s largest business site, as well as the Editor-in-chief of the international publication, PrintWeek, based in Dubai.
As a journalist, Kassiem's specialisation included Education and Justice. She has written extensively about education, specifically in South Africa and has also covered high-profile cases at South African courts. She has also written on South Africa’s prisons and justice system.
During her career, her work has appeared in the Sunday Times, the Cape Times, the Mail&Guardian, PrintWeek in Dubai, Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin as well as on online platforms News24, News24 Business, The Media Online, GroundUp, SudLink and Transitions Online in Prague.
Her work as a foreign correspondent for Transitions Online also appeared in a book, entitled Classroom Struggles: Education reporting and Analysis.
Kassiem has previously served as a guest lecturer in Media Studies at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and presently works as an editor at the City of Cape Town.
Kassiem graduated cum laude from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, after having spent a few months on scholarship in the Netherlands, studying African colonialism and Magazine journalism. She also has a diploma from CityVarsity in Cape Town in Multimedia and Radio journalism.
Apart from hard news, Kassiem has also published a series of travelogues about her adventures in South Africa and various parts of the world. These anecdotes appeared in the travel supplement, Escape Times, and detail some of her experiences in Zimbabwe, Zanzibar, Tanzania and Switzerland.
She has also travelled to the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Mauritius, Turkey, UAE, Oman, USA and China.
Inspired by human stories, Kassiem has a deep interest in history, especially South African history, and the many ways that the past and the present collide. This is one of the themes that is explored in Suitcase of Memory. The novel is available at all good bookstores nationwide.
Kassiem lives in Cape Town with her husband and two daughters.
