Maneo Refiloe Mohale is a queer South African Black feminist writer, editor, and poet. They have written for various local and international publications including Jalada, Prufrock, The Beautiful Project, The Mail & Guardian and spectrum.za.[1] Their debut collection of poetry, Everything is a deathly flower, was published in September 2019 with uHlanga Press.[2] In 2020, Mohale was shortlisted for the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize, making them the youngest finalist of that year.[3]
Maneo Mohale was born in 1992 in Benoni, South Africa. They hold a Bachelor of Arts degree (Honours) in History and International Relations from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
After living in Canada for 5 years, they now live in Johannesburg working as a writer and editor.[4]
Mohale's work engages with the topics of race, media, queerness, survivorship, language and history.[5] Their undergraduate thesis at the University of British Columbia was titled A Dance in the Rain: Race, Resistance and Media in Apartheid South Africa.[6] In their time in university, Mohale was introduced to arts journalism when they co-founded an online student journalism platform called The Talon in 2014.[7] [8]