Kelwyn Sole grew up in Johannesburg and has degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. He has published widely in local and international books and journals, mainly on issues pertaining to South African and postcolonial literature and culture, as well as being involved in published debates and polemics. He has also published six individual collections of poetry. He has won the Olive Schreiner Prize, the Sydney Clouts Prize and the Thomas Pringle Award for poetry, and was a runner-up for the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. He has won the AA Mutual Life/Vita Award and the Thomas Pringle Award for his critical work.

Books:

The Blood of Our Silence (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1988)
Projections in the Past Tense (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1992)
Love That is Night  (Durban, Gecko Books, 1998)
Mirror and Water Gazing  (Pietermaritzburg, Gecko/University of Natal Press, 2001)
Land dreaming: prose poems (Pietermaritzburg, University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, 2006
Absent Tongues (Cape Town, Hands-On Books, 2012)