Zakes Mda was born in the Herschel district of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. He is the author of five novels, one novella and more than twenty plays and is also a painter, composer and filmmaker. He commutes between South Africa and the USA, working as a professor of creative writing at Ohio University, beekeeper in the Eastern Cape, an adviser to the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, and a director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Sophiatown, Johannesburg.