Marcelo Panguana, Mozambican writer and journalist, was born on 30th of March 1951 in colonial Lourenço Marques (nowadays Maputo). In 1971 he entered the university but his Chemistry studies were interrupted because of the war. Only after the independence, in 1976, did he resume higher education studies, now in the field of oil refining. He started his literary career writing poetry and collaborating in the cultural pages of newspapers and magazines such as “Domingo”, “Notícias” and “Tempo”, among others. In the beginning of the 90s, he created and ran “Xipalapala”, a successful literary supplement of “Notícias”. In the 80s, he joined the AEMO – Association of Mozambican Writers – and became a very active member. Not only did he occupy different positions in the AEMO's management and assembly during ...

Mia Couto, whose real name is António Emílio Leite Couto, was born in Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique, in 1955. He moved to Lourenço Marques in 1971 to study medicine at the colonial university. After the independence, he got a degree in Biology at the Eduardo Mondlane University. He worked as a journalist with the newspaper A Tribuna and was the director of Agência de Informação de Moçambique. He ran the magazine Tempo and worked for the newspaper Notícias. His first published literary work was a collection of poems, Raiz de Orvalho (Dew's Root, 1983). Since then, he published several novels, as well as collections of short stories, chronicles and novellas. Among them, Vozes Anoitecidas (Voices Made Night, 1986); Cada Homem É uma Raça (Every Man Is a ...

Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, whose Portuguese name is Francisco Esaú Cossa, was born in 1957 in Inhaminga, in the province of Sofala. Speaker of Tsonga, Khosa attended primary school in Sofala and secondary school in the province of Zambézia. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and Geography from the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. After the independence, Khosa became a school teacher and worked for the Ministry of Education. He is now the Director of the Instituto Nacional do Livro e do Disco (National Institute of the Book and Disc). His literary career started with his participation in the literary magazine Charrua and the publication of his first novel Ualalapi (1987). Since then he published three more novels — No Reino dos Abutres (In the Kingdom of Vultures, 2002) ...