Writer. Performance artist. Facilitator.
Brenton Sizwe Zola is a first-generation writer, performance artist and researcher. Informed by experiences of childhood homelessness, global travel and a lineage of African spiritual leaders, his work examines themes of myth, spirit and sanctity—often inviting participants into deep spaces of vulnerability. His interdisciplinary and performance work has been featured at the United Nations, Norman Rockwell Museum, Broad Art Center, Denver Art Museum, College of Extraordinary Experiences and many others.
His writing has appeared in Newsweek, INC, American Theater, Boulevard Magazine, Tendon, Prism and NPR member-station WBUR Boston, among others.
Brenton is a recipient of the Marianne Russo Award for a Novel-in-Progress at the Key West Literary Seminar, an Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, a Periplus Fellowship, an inaugural LinkedIn Creator Accelerator membership, an inaugural Writing-in-Color Fellowship at the Lighthouse Writers' Workshop and an inaugural Playwright Fellowship at Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He served as a curator for the Tilt West arts journal and as a fellow in the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA.
Explore the writing ↗I come from a lineage shaped by Congolese spiritual and political leadership. My great grandfather, Charles Kisolokele, served in Patrice Lumumba’s free government. His father, Simon Kimbangu, led one of Africa’s most enduring anti-colonial spiritual movements. And further back is Kimpa Vita, who imagined a democratic vision of the Kongo centuries before it was realized. This inheritance does not define my work, but it informs it. I aim to hold a mirror to the village—to participate, however imperfectly, in the ongoing work of truth.
— Brenton Sizwe Zola