Marjorie van Heerden
Marjorie Hope van Heerden (born October 8, 1949) is a South African writer and illustrator of children’s books. Since the publication of her first children’s picture book in 1983, van Heerden has been published as illustrator or writer/illustrator in 33 languages in Africa, Britain, Europe, the Orient, Canada and the USA. Biography. Born in De Doorns to Alex and Marina van Niekerk (née Botha), Marjorie grew up on a table grapes farm outside De Doorns in the Hex River Valley near Cape Town in South Africa. She matriculated from Rustenburg School for Girls in  Cape Town in 1967, studied Fine Art for one year at Stellenbosch University and then went to the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town for three years. In 1973 she married Johann van Heerden and they have two children. The family is widely travelled, having lived for a year in Evanston, Chicago. From 1989 to 1999 they lived in Johannesburg and from 1999 to 2003 in Athens, Greece. Since 2003 the couple has been living in Gordon's Bay village on False Bay outside Cape Town. In 2003 van Heerden started the South African chapter  of the international Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), based in Los Angeles. In 2000 she and a friend also started the SCBWI chapter in Greece. She is currently the co-regional advisor of the South African chapter. Awards and honors. Awards Marjorie van Heerden has won for her work include the 2011 W.B. Mkhize Award, given annually by the Usiba Writers’ Guild, for the Zulu version of "Lulama’s long way home" ("Uhambo LukaLulama Olude"), a picture book she wrote and illustrated, published by Giraffe Books, an imprint of Pan MacMillan. In 2012, Marjorie and author  Alex D’Angelo won the M.E.R. Award (one of the Media24 Books Literary Awards) for the best illustrated children’s book published in South African during the previous year (2011) – they won for "Goblin Diaries: Apprenticed to the Red Witch", published by Tafelberg Publishers (SA). This was the second time she had been awarded this prestigious award - the first time was in 2008 when she won it with author Wendy Hartmann for "Nina and Little Duck", published in 2007 by Human & Rousseau (SA).