Born in Kimberley, South Africa in 1962, Norman G. Kester emigrated with his father and three sisters to Canada in 1969 during the height of grand apartheid. They left the country at a time when civil and other rights were being taken away from Africans and those referred to as "coloureds" of which Mr. Kester's family is associated with.
Mr. Kester was educated at York University in Toronto and the University Western Ontario. His first major work--Liberating Minds, in which he functioned as editor, won praise from Library Journal in 1997. From here to District Six: a South African Memoir, his second work, is broad in scope and relates to the impact of colonialism and apartheid. It speaks of personal forgiveness and national reconciliation. The writer's work is fused with a deep questioning of the past and relate to social, psychological, political and cultural exile. "Kester's writing shifts genre, tense, persona, chronology, gender and language in the effort to force memory to define him," states NELM News, a South African literary journal.
Of his newest work, Liquid Love and Other Longings, Mr. Kester believes, "it is my best work of poetry and it examines the meaning of love, its desperate pain and utter beauty." The poet has read and performed from his work at the University of Toronto, Mayworks 2000, Desh Pardesh, Pride 2000, York University, local venues and bookstores in Toronto and San Francisco. His books are available in libraries in Canada, the U.S., Britain, Europe and South Africa.
A strong advocate for intellectual freedom and social justice, he has served on the Canadian Book and Periodical Council's Freedom of Expression Committee. Mr. Kester would like to see the establishment of the Brand-Clarke Award of Excellence in Poetry that would be awarded yearly by the League of Canadian Poets to a Canadian minority poet whose work is of high literary merit. He lives in Toronto and is available for readings, residencies and to teach creative writing workshops to writers and poets. (Author photo by Tania Sanhueza, 2001)
