User:Fuzchia/Megan Voysey-Braig

Megan Voysey-Braig is a South African writer known for her debut novel Till We Can Keep an Animal, which won the European Union Literary Award for 2007/08 and was shortlisted for Africa's 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book.

Till We Can Keep an Animal is the story of a South African woman who is killed after being sexually assaulted, and then stays in the area as a ghost, visiting relatives and telling the story through her eyes. Voysey-Braig has said that the novel's subject matter is so serious because she wanted to explore her country's history of violence and Apartheid, and its impact on modern South Africa.

Voysey-Braig has said that her writing process involves listening to the characters inside her and then writing down their stories: "I have a few hundred people in me at a time (so it feels!) vying for their stories to be told, which can make it very exhausting." She cites Jean-Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and JM Coetzee as influences on her.

In 2008, Voysey-Braig spent a nine-month sabbatical in Berlin for inspiration for her writing.