Jo-Anne Richards is a journalist and novelist who lives and works in Johannesburg. Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, was written in the early 1990s, and published in the UK in November 1996. It became an instant bestseller in South Africa, where it topped the bestseller list for fifteen weeks, and was subsequently short-listed for the prestigious M-Net Awards. It also sold very well in the UK and elsewhere (and is in the process of turning into a film). The Innocence of Roast Chicken deals with growing up under apartheid. Her second novel, Touching the Lighthouse, launched in November 1997, is about the radical politics of the 1980s. Her new novel, Sad at the Edges, launched in April 2003, is about a South African woman’s return to vibrant Johannesburg after a sojourn in London.

Jo-Anne spent her childhood in Port Elizabeth, and was educated at Collegiate Girls’ High School. She maintains that “an Eastern Cape upbringing does give you that sense of texture because it’s a barefoot, dusty childhood, running wild. You got a feel of the smells and the feel of growing up in South Africa.”