Sarah Penny

Sarah Penny was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1970. She studied at the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University and St Andrews University, Scotland, emigrating to the UK in 2003 to lecture in Creative Writing at Brunel University London, where she completed her PhD on sangomas (traditional African healers).

Sarah has three children and lives in North London, but still travels regularly to South Africa. When not writing and teaching, she works with communities, mainly in African countries, using arts for social change.

She is the author of two novels, originally published by Penguin South Africa: The Beneficiaries (2002) and The Lies We Shared (2011). The Beneficiaries was a set-text in South African secondary schools in 2013-2014, and was re-published in a new edition by Valley Press in 2019.