Denis Hirson

Denis Hirson was born in 1951 in Cambridge, England, he lived till the age of 22 in Johannesburg where he studied Social Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, later obtaining a doctorate in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In 1975 he settled in France, where he lives near Paris. He has worked as an actor, does readings of South African poetry with an actress and saxophone player, and teaches English at the École Polytechnique. One of his seven books is a history of South African writing since the nineteenth century, another a volume of poetry. He has also produced three anthologies of South African poetry in French and an anthology in English covering the period 1960 - 1996.