The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation launches its #18for9 challenge

It Wilbur read every Sunday his entire life, whenever he was in the country. – Niso Smith

The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation launches its #18for9 challenge to encourage parents to read to their children for a minimum of 18 minutes on January 9, 2026.

The reason is simple says foundation chair, Niso Smith: “My late husband owed his entire career to his love of reading, which was spawned by his mother reading to him when he was small.”

Her husband, Wilbur Smith, wrote 49 books before passing away at the age of 88 in 2021, selling more than 140 million copies and becoming the continent’s pre-eminent adventure writer. The estate has published a further nine books in the four years since, using co-authors and the notes and storylines that he left behind.

In September 2015, the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation launched an annual series of awards. The main £15,000 (R340,310,000) prize, recognises the best adventure book of the year. Another is to help authors find a publisher and to encourage young people to start writing.

“In a way, the #18for9 campaign closes the circle on this entire process,” Niso explains. “Wilbur writes in his memoir, On Leopard’s Rock: ‘Every night, before I could read myself, (my mother) read bedtime stories to me. That hour or so was the greatest pleasure I could ever remember because she instilled in me such a love of stories’. Reading was vital to him.”

That same love of reading would be his faithful companion when Wilbur was sent from Zambia to boarding school in KwaZulu-Natal as a young boy, she says, a move that would spark a burgeoning career as the editor of the unofficial school newspaper in the KZN Midlands - a newspaper that he started – and ultimately a global career that opened up a world he could only have dreamed of.

At last week’s Sunday Times Literary Awards, Gratton Kirk, the CEO of Exclusive Books, spoke of the importance of reading to your child for even 10 minutes a night to spark their curiosity, their creativity and their connection to their parents.

Niso, who was married to Wilbur for 21 years before his death in November 2021, sees her life’s work as continuing his legacy, which stretches beyond translating the many storylines and narrative ideas he had into novels for a new generations of readers. Her goal is to encourage the love of reading – and writing - wherever and whenever it can be encouraged, especially in children. The #18for9 challenge is a way of improving the world’s children. In South Africa, 81% of Grade 4 learners struggle to read for comprehension – in any of the official languages.

To date the foundation has helped scores of brand new writers find their voice – and get published – through recognising five new writers per year from diverse, under-represented backgrounds, while the prize for the best adventure book of the year has been awarded 10 times.

It’s wonderful to have the Sunday Times supporting this initiative. It is an iconic South African paper that Wilbur read every Sunday his entire life, whenever he was in the country. –

—  Niso Smith

“It’s wonderful to have the Sunday Times supporting this initiative,’ Niso said. “It is an iconic South African paper that Wilbur read every Sunday his entire life, whenever he was in the country.”

Sunday Times deputy editor Mike Siluma said the paper was just as excited at the prospect of the partnership.

“Today’s readers are tomorrow’s writers and, to borrow from an old African phrase, which Wilbur himself might have appreciated, until the lion learns to tell his own story, the story of the hunt will always be told by the hunter. It’s why we are so keen to foster a love of reading – and writing – through the various projects we have and #18for9 fits perfectly into this.

“Let’s get families reading again on January 9 next year, Wilbur’s birthday,” Siluma says.