On October 30, 1987, fourteen South African writers and critics came to Northwestern University and engaged in a day of discussion and debate on South African culture, literature, and politics. Such a forum was unthinkable under apartheid. The conference bridged the distances of exile for the participants--seven were from South Africa, seven from the U.S. and other countries. Crossing differences of race, gender, generation, and experience, the fourteen engaged in constructing an outline for the consideration of literary culture in South Africa and discussed future projects of literary creation in the country.

This edited transcript of the conference remarks is an engaging look inside the collaborative process of working out the ideas and problems of a literary culture in general and South Africa's apartheid-era literary culture in particular.