Wilma Stockenström

Wilma Johanna Stockenström (born 7 August 1933) is a South African writer, translator, and actor. She writes in the Afrikaans language, and along with Sheila Cussons, Elisabeth Eybers, Antjie Krog and Ina Rousseau, she is one of the leading female writers in the language. She was born in Napier in the Overberg district of South Africa. After finishing high school, she studied at Stellenbosch University, where she obtained a BA in Drama in 1952. She moved to Pretoria in 1954, and married the Estonian linguist Ants Kirsipuu. Stockenström has lived in Cape Town since 1993.

She is one of a handful of writers to have won the Hertzog prize in two different categories. She won it first for poetry in 1977 and then for fiction in 1991. Her 1981 novel Die kremetartekspedisie was translated into English by the Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee under the title The Expedition to the Baobab Tree. Her work has also been translated into Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish and Swedish.