Maneo Refiloe Mohale

Maneo Refiloe Mohale is a queer South African Black feminist writer, editor, and poet who writes on race, media, queerness, survivorship, language and history. Their work has appeared in local and international publications including The Mail & Guardian, The Johannesburg Review of Books, and Bitch (magazine). Their debut collection of poetry, Everything is a deathly flower, was shortlisted for the Ingrid Jonker Prize and won the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.

Life Maneo Mohale was born in 1992 in Benoni, South Africa. Mohale's parents studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, among the first cohorts of Black students permitted to study there. Both were the first in their families to attend university, after petitioning the state to allow them to study at a white university. Mohale attended predominantly white private schools and also spent a lot of time in Katlehong where their grandparents lived.

After living in Canada for 5 years, they returned to Johannesburg.

In 2016, Mohale won a Bitch Media Writing Fellowship in global feminism. The fellowship, one of four for emerging writers offered by Bitch (magazine), included a cash stipend of $2000 as well as mentorship and support. Fellows were expected to contribute articles in their fellowship topic area and participate in staff meetings. During their fellowship, Mohale wrote on race, media, sexuality, and survivorship.

In 2017, Mohale became managing editor of Platform Media and an acting arts editor for The Mail & Guardian. The poems are titled using binomial names for plants, in an examination of both imperial and personal desire for classification and naming. In the same year, the book won the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.

Mohale has been longlisted twice for the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award. Jalada, Prufrock, and spectrum.za.