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Tlotlo Tsamaase

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Tlotlo Tsamaase
© Lorraine Kinnear

© Lorraine Kinnear

Tlotlo Tsamaase is a Nommo Award-winning Motswana author. Longlisted for the British Science Fiction Award, her debut novel, Womb City, is an Ignyte, Nommo, and Locus Award finalist. Her novella, The Silence of Wilting Skin, is a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and her short fiction has appeared in multiple best-of anthologies, such as Africa Risen, New Suns 2, Chiral Mad 5, and others. She received support from the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Originally from Botswana, she now lives in Nebraska.

 

Schedule

10:30 am to 11:30 am
State Library, Fifth Floor, Capitol View Room
Ghosts and Other Hauntings: Grief, Rage, and Reckoning
Kim Fu, The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts: A Novel
Jennifer Murphy, The Ghost Women: A Novel
Tlotlo Tsamaase, House of Margins: A Novel
with moderator Serena Puang

11:45 am to 12:30 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

House of Margin: A Novel

Serial the podcast meets The Other Black Girl in a haunted house, as young African author disappears after being invited to an exclusive writing residency, and her sister is left only with a true crime podcast to help her uncover the truth about what really happened…

Anaya Sebeya is missing.

Before her disappearance, Anaya was a brilliant writer: a rising star. Invited to a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, an eerie colonial mansion on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, Anaya was supposed to craft the next great African literary masterpiece—and so were four other young, emerging writers, all competing for the grand prize. But Anaya never made it home.

When a sensationalized true crime podcast about Anaya emerges, claiming to reveal everything that happened at Günter Huis, her sister Ranewa is both skeptical and furious. But with each surreal episode, Ranewa begins to piece together a truth worse than she ever could have imagined…

At Günter Huis, Anaya’s nightmares consume her. Time slips away from her. Günter Huis inflicts distorted visions and terrible supernatural visitations, pushing Anaya to tell a story no one dares. But exorcising the house’s endless cycle of evil requires a sacrifice that neither Anaya nor her fellows are ready to make.

In House of Margins, award-winning Motswana author Tlotlo Tsamaase delivers a mesmerizing story of a young generation facing colonialism’s cultural legacy in Africa.