Braids & Migraines

ANDILE CELE is a writer and communications specialist, born and raised
in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal. She was born in 1986, when apartheid was nearing its
end - to a mother who has worked as a domestic worker all her adult life. She
has three siblings, one of them, a brother who is autistic and non-verbal.
Andile's advocacy for mental health awareness stems from the experiences they
faced as a family - with a member who was and still is, for the most part, misunderstood.



Andile has a degree in Journalism from the Tshwane University
of Technology, and a Creative Writing and Theory of Literature degree from the
University of South Africa. She is an MA candidate at Stellenbosch University,
where she is examining the depiction of intergenerational trauma in selected
South African women's writing. She is the current holder of the Gwen
Knowles-Williams Bursary, administered by the English Academy of Southern
Africa.



In 2023 she was runner up in the Island Prize for her
manuscript Braids and Migraines. She dedicates her writing to her mother. Her
short fiction has been published in Botsotso and Short.Sharp.Stories.