Bronwyn Law-Viljoen

Bronwyn Law-Viljoen is a South African writer, editor, publisher and professor. She is the co-founder of the publisher Fourthwall Books and owns a bookstore called Edition. She acts as the primary editor for works on law and history of South Africa and the architecture and building process of its constitutional court structures, along with artistic book publications of the work of William Kentridge. She has also published her own novel called The Printmaker.

Education
Law-Viljoen has an MA degree (1994) from Rhodes University in South Africa, a PhD in Literature (2003) from New York University and a PhD in Creative Writing (2017) from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Author
Law-Viljoen's first novel, The Printmaker, was published in 2016 (Umuzi/Penguin Random House). It was shortlisted for the premier fiction prize in South Africa for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Award, and won the 2018 English Academy of South Africa Olive Schreiner Prize. It appeared in French in 2019 (Editions Zoé).

Academic
Law-Viljoen is an associate professor, the head of the Department of Creative Writing and the deputy head of the School of Literature, Language and Media at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Editor
Law-Viljoen was the editor of the arts magazine Art South Africa and editor-in-chief at David Krut Publishing in Johannesburg. Prior to that, she completed an internship at the independent photography publishing company, Aperture, in New York.

She is the editor and co-founder of Fourthwall Books, an independent publisher of books on art and photography established in South Africa in 2010. By 2020, the company had published 41 books and won several important awards: the 2010 Jane Jacobs Best Urban Book Award (New York) for Writing the City into Being; the 2011 Antalis Paper Loves You Award for Fire Walker; the 2015 Jan Rabie Rapport Prize for Non-Fiction for Nagmusiek; the 2015 Kyknet Rapport Prize for Fiction for Nagmusiek; the 2016 Eugene Marais Prize for Nagmusiek; and the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award 2019 for Everyone is Present. Through Fourthwall Books, she has been involved in the editing and publishing of a number of authors' works, including Flute by William Kentridge, Light on a Hill with contributions by multiple architects, builders, and court judges that Law-Viljoen helped to compile, and Art and Justice on the history and conception of the constitutional court in South Africa.

She also opened her own bookstore called Edition in Milpark, Johannesburg as an extension of her publishing company.

Novels

 * The Printmaker (2016, Umuzi/Penguin Random House), translated as Le Graveur (2019, Editions Zoé)

Books edited

 * Fire Walker: William Kentridge, Gerhard Marx (with Oliver Barstow, 2011, Fourthwall Books)
 * William Kentridge Nose: Thirty Etchings (2010, David Krut Publishing)
 * Art and Justice: The Art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (2008, David Krut Publishing)
 *  William Kentridge Flute (2007, David Krut Publishing)
 * Light on a Hill: Building the Constitutional Court of South Africa (2006, David Krut Publishing)
 * William Kentridge Prints (2006, David Krut Publishing)

Awards and honours

 * 2018: Olive Schreiner Prize from the English Academy of South Africa, for The Printmaker
 * 2017: The Printmaker shortlisted for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Award
 * 2001: Americanist Molberger Prize for Literature of the Transition
 * 1996–1998: Fulbright Scholarship, New York University