Koleka Putuma

Koleka Putuma (b 1993, South Africa) is a performance poet, playwright and theatre director based in Cape Town.

In 2017, her debut poetry collection, Collective Amnesia, achieved bestseller status and went on to receive the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. It is currently in its ninth print run.

Putuma has been a South African National Poetry Slam champion, and was also recognised with a place on Forbes’ Africa ‘30 Under 30’ list. She has been described as “the groundbreaking new voice of South African poetry” by OkayAfrica, which singled out her “uncompromising fearlessness” for praise. 

A translation of her debut poetry collection into Danish is forthcoming, following previous translations into Spanish and German.