Ronelda Sonnet Kamfer was born in Cape Town. Her debut poetry collection, Noudat Slapende Honde (2008), won the Eugène Marais Prize. Her second book, Grond/Santekraam, won the Absa Kanna Award in (2012). She has been a writer in residence in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and in La Rochelle, France. Her third collection, Hammie, was published in 2016 and fourth in Chinatown (2019). Her work has been translated into Dutch by Alfred Schaffer, Italian, Terra/E tutto il resto (2018) by Raffaelli Editore and French (2021), Caracters Editore in Paris. She completed her MA degree at Rhodes University in 2018. She was announced as Regional Poet Laureate in 2021 by the South African Literary Association. Her debut novel, Kompoun was published 2022 by Kwela publishers for which she received the HSS award for fiction novel, as well as the Rapport Jan Rabie prize for early novel. She is currently working on a fifth poetry collection and a collection of short stories.
