Denis Hirson was born in Cambridge, England, of South African parents in 1951. He lived in South Africa from 1952 until 1973, the year in which his father, who had been a political prisoner, was released from jail. He studied Social Anthropology at the University of tyhe Witwaters rand, Johannesburg, and has since worked as an English teacher, and before that as an actor, in France.

He has written several books on the theme of memory in South Africa: The House Next Door to Africa, I Remember King Kong (the Boxer) and We Walk Straight So You Better Get Out the Way. White Scars is due out in July 2006. Denis Hirson is also the editor of two anthologies, The Heinemenn Book of South African Short Stories (with Martin Trump), and The Lava of this Land, South African Poetry 1960-1996. He has translated into English a selection of Breyten Breytenbach’s poetry, In Africa Even the Flies are Happy. He is a graduate of the Univesity of East Anglia’s doctoral programme in creative writing.