30 July 2025
Prof Mehita Iqani joins SANAP-AWP as Writer-in-Residence for Marion 2025 takeover Voyage.
Under the leadership of Prof Charne Lavery (UP) and Prof Jean Brundrit (UCT) a pilot project to set up an Artist Writers Programme (AWP) for the South African National Antarctic Programme is underway. In liaison with the Centre for Science Communication and SARChI’s flagship creative writing and science encounter, FicSci, the AWP helped Prof Mehita Iqani and Dr Wamuwi Mbao (the FicSci co-convenors) select an Antarctic scientist (Dr Tokoloho Rampai) for FicSci 03 in 2024. The cohort of writers applied to join the AWP, and two of them participated in a residential programme in Cape Town in 2024. The AWP secured a berth on the Agulhas II for the Marion Island 2025 takeover voyage in April-May, and selected a FicSci 03 writer to go. However, for reasons outside of their control, the writer could not take the berth, and with only five days’ notice before the ship set sail, it was decided that rather than lose the berth, Mehita should go in the writers place (as she was the only replacement who could make it happen in her schedule). “I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have learned more about Antarctic science and its communication, and to have had the privilege of spending a month aboard our scientific research vessel working on creative projects. It was a real joy to see this special part of the Southern Ocean and Marion Island,” said Mehita. While on the voyage, she worked on a special podcast season for The Academic Citizen, a collection of short poems to be self-published as a chapbook, a novelette building on her short story in FicSci 03, and a couple of short stories (all of which are still in development and will meet the world when the right platforms and timings present themselves).