Koleka Putuma is a multi-award-winning theatre practitioner, writer and poet based in Cape Town, South Africa. She conveys her enquiries through performance, publications, and installations. Her practice explores the voice and body as channels for images, language and dreams, weaving citation, religion and cultural and historical identities to make sense of the world.
She has published three poetry collections, a children’s book and several plays. In September 2025, Bonnier Books UK published her debut children’s book, Everybody Has a Fear, and it has since been translated into Korean, Spanish, and German. In 2024, Hot Key Books (UK) published her latest poetry collection for teens and young adults, ‘We Have Everything We Need To Start Again’.
Her debut studio album, “Can I Get a Witness?” (2024), a 7-track poetry album that honours collaboration while continuing the tradition of well-crafted poems set to jazz, is available on all streaming platforms and accessible on vinyl.
She is the recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Poetry (2022), the first in the awards’ 49-year history, a Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative finalist for theatre, and a Forbes Africa Under 30 Honouree.
She is the founder and director of Manyano Media, a multidisciplinary creative company that produces and uplifts stories by Black queer and non-binary artists.
