Bénédicte Kusendila

Belgian writer-activist Bénédicte Kusendila loves nature, music and her family. She used to be a member of the South-African Afrikaans Writers Guild (Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging). She received an M.A. in Germanic Languages, English and Applied Linguistics, from the Catholic University of Louvain and holds an M.Phil-degree in Education and Applied Language Studies from the University of Cape Town. Her poems and short stories have been published in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, in various international online magazines and have also appeared in printed literary journals and anthologies since 2015. Some have been listed below. Sink!, her first short story, appeared in print in Rad Publishing's Wanderlust issue (2017).  TikTok, another short story, appears in Beyond Words Literary Magazine.
Sewn In Red, her debut poetry collection, was published with Rad Publishing in 2017.

Bénédicte was longlisted for the 2017 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize and has performed on festivals such as the Stellenbosch Woordfees in South Africa, in the United States and in Europe.  
In 2019, she toured Europe with the K{no}whate collective. For Victim Support Europe, she wrote Trust; the poem was filmed for their campaign against online hate speech. In 2020 and 2021, her poetry was published in pandemic-related art projects such as Alan Nakagawa's sound collage: Social Distance, Haiku and You (Orange County Museum of Art). Maintenant, Three Rooms Press' annual global leading publication for all contemporary DADA art & creative writing, features her poetry in their 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 journals. She also got featured on BBC Radio Kent’s Upload and performed during the 2022, 2023 and 2024 New York Public Library’s International DADA Salon. She took part in the US National Park Service Terminus memorial project with her “Bear Pass Glacier Renga" and was Artist in Residence at the Olympic National Park in the Summer of 2023. With Three Rooms Press's Peacefire, she toured parts of Europe in the Fall of 2023. In Louvain, she and Belgian poet-laureate Charles Ducal shared the honour of reading their own poetry. Channel, Ireland's environmentalist literary magazine, featured her poem "Siblings" in their Issue 10 and it was also broadcast as a video poem. She was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize for Poetry 2024 and was Poet of the Week at the Poetry Super Highway. Bénédicte performs on both sides of the Atlantic.