André Wiesner: Professional Writer • Editor  • Media Developer

Firebreak Studios

About André

Born in 1967 in South Africa, André Wiesner is a writer of journalism and fiction.

             He has received numerous awards for his work, and was a PICA Consumer Journalist of the Year, as well the winner of a PICA Award for Leisure Writing. His article Bullet Club was shortlisted for a Mondi award in the Best Features category, and The Million Dollar Meat Hook was a nominee in the Best Finance Story category. For The Dead Beat he won a Mondi for Best Feature.

             He studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT), majoring in English and Political Studies and receiving his BA with distinction. After taking an Honours degree in English, he furthered his postgraduate studies by writing a Master of Arts thesis on violence and writing, with its focus on the novelist André Brink.

             The dissertation’s supervisor, the Nobel laureate JM Coetzee, was kind enough to describe it as “the most frankly unmoralistic study of Brink hitherto”. The degree was awarded cum laude.

             André has experience in radio and television, but his principal media work has been in print journalism and online editing. In conjunction with Bush Radio, he co-produced an audio documentary on struggle-era music as part of a project by the University of the Western Cape to raise public awareness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was also employed by a television production company as a researcher and ice-breaker responsible for setting up interviews, and occasionally doubled as an ad hoc “re-enactor” in mockumentary inserts; he has conducted on-air TV interviews as well.

             In terms of print and online journalism, though, his experience has been extensive. He has freelanced for supplements such as Sunday Times Lifestyle, newspapers such as the Cape Times and Mail & Guardian, and an array of magazines, including SL, Marie Claire (SA) and Cosmopolitan. In addition, he produced several B2B publications for the timeshare-exchange corporation, RCI.

             As news editor at the online portal WorldOnline Tiscali (since then decommissioned), André’s duties were multifaceted. They ranged from editing and packaging headline updates and writing copy for a daily subscription-service newsletter, to liaising with revenue partners and external contributors and preparing special exhibitions of work by the country’s premiere photojournalists, all of whom were poached from competing news outlets.

             Chief among these duties was the business of branding the news channel: stoking up the heat in chat forums, writing editorials and shorter satires, and conducting e-mail interviews with newsmakers of whatever stripe – from business tycoons and police profilers to actuality-show celebrities and political leaders.

             André was for several years a full-time, tenured lecturer at UCT’s Centre for Film and Media Studies, where he taught Media Studies. At undergraduate level he convened a lecture series which examined freedom of expression in South Africa, and he led seminars in feature journalism and crime reporting; at postgraduate level, he hosted courses in travel writing and narrative literary journalism. André also convened the Centre’s competitive-entry production course in journalism and supervised MA dissertations for the Centre of Creative Writing. His scholarly essays were published in Pretexts and Javnost, the journal of the European Institute of Culture and Communication.

             In 2008 André resigned from UCT in order to pursue his career as a writer, editor and media developer. Recently he has written for publications such as Art SA, Obrigado, Private Edition and Marie Claire. In addition, he writes for, and provides strategic editorial advice to, a member-magazine produced by a division of Southern Sun. André is active as an editor, particularly in the NGO sector, and has developed organisational websites, taking the view that they are publication entities in their own right and should be approached as such.