Books, publications and anthologies featuring my work.
Milk Fever
Published by uHlanga Press and released in the latter half of 2018, this is Milk Fever
“Against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and the general turn towards feminism as a way of grappling with questions of what it means to be a woman in today’s world, this kind of work is no doubt significant. In her 2018 Stockholm speech, Chimamanda Adichie called for storytelling as one way to navigate the complexities of a women’s experiences today. The poems in Ross’ collection are doing just that. They are creating powerful points of connection between the personal and the political, the angst-ridden and the joyful, and, thus providing clarity in a time when everything seems so topsy-turvy.”
– BRITTLE PAPER
With a beautiful cover collage by Taiwan-based artist, Leora Joy, this is a book striking both in form and content.’
‘i sewed your name into my
heel. I was 15 and a
fool, I let it swim under
my skin & breathe smoke into
my veins, confusing the heat
with something living, not a
dead star orbiting wet galaxies.’
Praise for Milk Fever
“She…revives language through integrating on the page the innovations of the spoken word.”
— Raphael D’abdon, Stanzas
“Reading Megan Ross’ Milk Fever has been like delving into an ocean, of blood. The veins are rivers, heavy breasts pelt bullets, thick lips shun prayer, and the madness of cows and women alike bursts upward like the wild dandelion flower. Milk Fever helped me reconcile with the historicity as well the spiritual connections between women and cows—something Toni Morrison in Beloved incites as well.”
“Milk Fever is successful in the way it stages the myth of origin as well as a myth of return. Ross takes us through a journey in and out of the ocean’s surface—also read Female Body—without destabilising the desire for home or even an authoritative voice, because as Yvette Christianse writes in Imprendehora: “all the vanities will be laid low, even to the oceans floor”.
“Milk Fever is an explosion and a testament to how “the sun turns heavy into the sea” (30); and after reading it I too want to “open my notebook; savour the slow-ripening quiet, of a morning that is mine, a small freedom found” (68).”
— Mapule Mohulatsi in her review, ‘Megan Ross’s Milk Fever: An Intimate Meditation on Motherhood and the Female Body’ for BRITTLE PAPER
The Heart of the Matter: Vol. III: The Gerald Kraak Anthology
My essay, ‘Monstrous’, was published in ‘The Heart of the Matter: Vol. III: The Gerald Kraak Anthology’.
First commissioned by Basit Jamu for Selves: an Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction; then, republished at Catapult; was a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and published a third time in the Gerald Kraak Anthology Vol III: The Heart of The Matter, which was a finalist for a LAMMY (Lambda Literary Award) in 2019.
THE SOL PLAATJE EUROPEAN UNION POETRY ANTHOLOGY VOLUME VII
Two of my poems were included in this anthology, published in 2017.
MIGRATIONS: SHORT FICTION FROM AFRICA
My short story, ‘Farang’, won second runner up for the Short Story Day Africa Award and was consequently published in this anthology of short fiction, edited by Efemia Chela, Bongani Kona and Helen Moffett.
water: SHORT FICTION FROM AFRICA
My short story, ‘Traces’, was shortlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Award and was consequently published in this anthology of short fiction, edited by Nick Mulgrew and Karina Szczurek.
TRADE SECRETS - TALES WITH A TWIST
My short story, ‘Eye Teeth’, was runner up for the Short.Sharp Award and was consequently published in this anthology of short fiction, edited by Joanne Hichens.