Jelly Dog Days

Erica Emdon was born in Johannesburg where she still lives with her family. She was educated at Wits University, completing a BA and Honours in Sociology, LLB and more recently a Masters in Writing. She has worked as lawyer since 1990 and is currently employed by ProBono.Org, a public interest NGO.  As a lawyer, she worked in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the emerging civic movement and participated in negotiations for improved housing and services. She advised NGOs and worked on transforming apartheid land and tenure legislation. She remained interested in social issues and became a volunteer for the Teddy Bear Clinic after 2000 when child abuse and sexual violence was highlighted as a growing social problem. There she was exposed to the difficult circumstances of children who are abused and it was here that she started interviewing survivors of childhood abuse and collecting material for what originally was intended to be a non-fiction book. Over time she realised that her stronger writing voice was in fiction, where she could use metaphor, texture and emotion to convey the narrative themes of family violence more effectively.  Jelly Dog Days, released on the 1st of September 2009, was written during 2006 and 2007 when she was enrolled in the Masters in Writing programmes at Wits. The novel is loosely based on the lives of women she interviewed, which have been fictionalised. She is currently writing a play based on stories about people she meets through her work and their ordeals within the criminal justice system, and has started her next novel. She has four children, loves cooking for pleasure and plays the classical guitar.