WILMA STOCKENSTROM is a well-established poet, novelist and dramatist, as well as a professional actress, appearing on stage, television and in film. She was born on August 7, 1933 in the small village of Napier in the wheat-growing Southern Cape. She obtained a BA degree in drama from the University of Stellenbosch in 1952. After a year of broadcasting in Cape Town, she moved to Pretoria, where she lived for many years, working as an actress for the stage and television. She and her husband, the linguist, Ants Kirsipuu, settled in Cape Town in 1993, where she still lives after his death early in 2003.
J.M. Coetzee's full name is John Michael Coetzee. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940, Coetzee is a writer and critic who uses the political situation in his homeland as a backdrop for many of his novels. Coetzee published his first work of fiction, Dusklands, in 1974. Another book, Boyhood, loosely chronicles an unhappy time in Coetzee's childhood when his family moved from Cape Town to the more remote and unenlightened city of Worcester. Other Coetzee novels are In the Heart of the Country and Waiting for the Barbarians. Coetzee's critical works include White Writing and Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. Coetzee is a two-time recipient of the Booker Prize and in 2003, he won the… Nobel Literature Award.