Breytenbach was an opponent of the apartheid regime, whose work represented a milestone in the development of Afrikaans poetry, formally and politically. His literary reputation is international, with work having been translated into Dutch, English, French and German.

Born on 16 September 1939 in Bonnievale, near Robertson
in the Cape, Breyten Breytenbach completed his schooling
at Hoërskool Hugenoot in Wellington, Cape. He began his tertiary studies at the University of Cape Town in 1958. His opposition to apartheid saw him leave South Africa for Paris
in 1960. In 1962 he married Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien,
a Viëtnamese national. His first published work, in 1964,
Die Ysterkoei Moet Sweet (The Iron Cow Must Sweat),
broke new ground in Afrikaans poetry as “powerful and
startling ideas are presented without the use of traditional rhythmic metres and attractive images” (Joyce).

When Breytenbach returned clandestinely to South Africa in 1975, he was swiftly arrested. He pleaded guilty to entering South Africa to start an organization, Atlas or Okhela, intended to be the white wing of the ANC. Charged with treason under the draconian Terrorism Act, he was sentenced in the Pretoria Supreme Court to nine years in prison. Even while in prison Breytenbach was prolific, writing five volumes of poetry and English prose. An example is his prison memoir Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1980). After his release in 1982 he left South Africa for France and became a French citizen.

He won the Rapport's major literature prize of R15 000 in April 1986 for his volume of poetry. His 1989 novel Memoire de Pousiere et de Neige (Memory of Dust and Snow) is a brilliant political analysis of the various anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, a truculent, thinly veiled autobiographical account which has been described as having a ‘dense style'. The moving prose of his autobiographical Return to Paradise brought a new focus on this extraordinarily gifted Afrikaner's conflict of love and hate for his roots.

In December 1993 Breytenbach — still living in self-imposed exile in Paris — paid a visit to the ‘new South Africa'. This
visit contrasted sharply with the fiasco of his furtive return
in 1975, the catastrophe of his arrest, excruciating
‘show trial', and the two years spent alone in a cell
directly adjoining Pretoria Central's death row.

Resident in Paris, he currently divides his time between Europe, South Africa and the USA, mostly writing and lecturing. In January 2000 he began a three year period in the Graduate School of Humanities of at the University of Cape Town as a visiting professor in the departments of English and Drama. He has taught creative writing there as well as at the Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal and the University of New York.

Breytenbach is also known for his paintings, many of which portray surreal animal and human figures, often in captivity.
He has exhibited in many countries.

'Christopher Nolan' (September 6, 1965 – February 20, 2009)
was an Irish poet and author and was the son of Joseph and Bernadette Nolan. He grew up in Mullingar, Ireland, but later
moved to Dublin to attend college. He was educated
at the Central Remedial Clinic School, Mount Temple
Comprehensive School and at Trinity College, Dublin.

Physically disabled from birth, with quadriplegia cerebral palsy,
he could not speak, or move, or eat or do anything for himself.
His disabilities were so severe that moving his eyes was his
sole means of communication. Unable to attend mainstream school his mother still believed that Christopher could understand what was going on around him and so she
taught him at home herself. The efforts put forth
by the Nolan family would eventually foster Christopher
talents. When he was young, his father told him stories
and read passages from James Joyce, Samuel Beckett
and D.H. Lawrence to keep his mind stimulated. His
mother strung up letters of the alphabet in the kitchen,
where she kept up a stream of conversation. His sister, Yvonne, sang songs and acted out skits.

At the age of 10, he was started on a new medication,
a "Miracle Drug". It was a medication that would finally
relax his muscles, at least to the extent that he would gain
this much control over his head and neck - with a unicorn
stick strapped to his forehead and his head cradled in his
mothers hands, he could finally communicate using a
keyboard, typing out one letter out at a time. The effort
involved was herculean and heroic for both Nolan and
his mother Bernadette. Typing a single word took minutes,
yet Nolan pressed on. By the age of 15, he published his
first collection of poems titled, "Dam-Burst of Dreams."

His next work,"Under the Eye of the Clock", was an account
of his childhood, he was now 21 years old. This literary effort
would end up winning him England's "Whitbread Book of the
Year Award" in 1987 - one of the United Kingdom's most
prestigious literary awards. He would then spend more than
a decade writing what would turn out to be his final work,
"The Banyan Tree". In addition his literary awards, he was
also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in the UK,
the medal of excellence from the United Nations Society
of Writers, and a Person of the Year award in Ireland.

"Crazy you must be in joining the academically brilliant he
scolded, fool to kiss goodbye to dear old isolation. Imagine
going looking for thrills. You'll get your bellyful my lad - hell
hath no fury like scorn for spastics and you go looking
for it, asking for it, offering yourself as a human sacrifice.
But then again, why not go, why not chance it?"
                           ~ Christopher Nolan ~

"Ben Hogan" William Ben Hogan (August 13, 1912 – July 25, 1997) was an American professional golfer, generally considered one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Born within six months of two other acknowledged golf greats of the twentieth century, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson, Hogan is notable for his profound influence on the golf swing theory and his legendary ball-striking ability, for which he remains renowned among players and fans. In 292 career PGA Tour events, Ben Hogan finished in the Top 3 in 47.6-percent of them. He finished in the Top 10 in 241 of those 292 events.

His nine career professional major championships tie him (with Gary Player) for fourth all-time, trailing only Jack Nicklaus (18), Tiger Woods (14) and Walter Hagen (11). Furthermore, he is one of only five golfers to have won all four major championships currently open to professionals (the Masters Tournament, the British Open, the U.S. Open, and the PGA Championship), the other four being Gene Sarazen, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

Hogan dropped out of Central High School (R.L. Paschal High School) during the final semester of his senior year, and became a professional golfer at the Texas Open in San
Antonio in late January 1930, more than six months shy of his eighteenth birthday. Hogan met Valerie Fox in Sunday
school in Fort Worth in the mid-1920s, and they
reacquainted in 1932 when he landed a low-paying club
pro job in Cleburne, where her family had moved.
They married in April 1935 at her parents' home.

His early years as a pro were very difficult, and Hogan went broke more than once. He did not win his first pro tournament as an individual until March 1940, when he won three consecutive tournaments in North Carolina. Although it took a decade to secure his first victory, Hogan's wife Valerie believed in him, and this helped see him through the tough years, when he battled a hook, which he later cured.

Between the years of 1938 through 1959, Hogan won 63 professional golf tournaments despite his career being interrupted in its prime by World War II and a near-fatal car accident. Hogan served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945, leaving with the rank of sergeant.

Hogan and his wife, Valerie, survived a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus on a fog-shrouded bridge, early in the morning, east of Van Horn, Texas on February 2, 1949. Hogan threw himself across Valerie in order to protect her, and would have been killed had he not done so, as the steering column punctured the driver's seat.

This accident left Hogan, age 36, with a double-fracture of
the pelvis, a fractured collar bone, a left ankle fracture, a chipped rib, and near-fatal blood clots: he would suffer
lifelong circulation problems and other physical limitations.
His doctors said he might never walk again, let alone play
golf competitively. While in hospital, Hogan's life was endangered by a blood clot problem, leading doctors
to tie off the vena cave. Hogan left the hospital on
April 1, 59 days after the accident.

After regaining his strength by extensive walking, he resumed golf activities in November 1949. He returned to the PGA Tour to start the 1950 season, at the Los Angeles Open, where he tied with Sam Snead over 72 holes, but lost the 18-hole playoff.

The win at Carnoustie was but a part of Hogan's watershed 1953 season, in which he won five of the six tournaments he entered and including three major championships
(a feat known as the "Hogan Slam").

It still stands among the greatest single seasons in the history of professional golf. Hogan, 40, was unable to enter — and possibly win — the 1953 PGA Championship (to complete the Grand Slam) because its play (July 1–7) overlapped the play of the British Open at Carnoustie (July 6–10), which he won. It was the only time that a golfer had won three major professional championships in a year until Tiger Woods won the final three majors in 2000 (and the first in 2001).

Hogan often declined to play in the PGA Championship, skipping it more and more often as his career wore on. There were two reasons for this: firstly, the PGA Championship was, until 1958, a match play event, and Hogan's particular skill was "shooting a number" — meticulously planning and executing a strategy to achieve a score for a round on a particular course (even to the point of leaving out the 7-iron in the U.S. Open at Merion, saying "there are no 7-iron shots at Merion"). The second reason was that the PGA required several days of 36 holes per day competition, and after his 1949 auto accident, Hogan struggled to manage more than 18 holes a day.