James Mbeki was born in 1985 in Pietermaritzburg and studied History and African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand. He worked as an archivist at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum and later as an editor at a small Johannesburg press, experiences that honed his interest in overlooked records and the lives that slip between them.
His debut novel, River Clay (2016), was shortlisted for the Highveld Fiction Prize, and his story collection Salt Pans (2020) won the Ink & Clay Award. His essays and short fiction have appeared in Cape Mosaic, Karoo Quarterly, and Southern Review Africa.
He teaches part-time in the creative writing program at the University of the Witwatersrand and volunteers with a heritage group recording oral histories in rural KwaZulu-Natal. He lives in Johannesburg with his partner and an aging fox terrier.
