JEFF OPLAND earned a PhD in English and African Languages from the University of Cape Town in 1973. After teaching at the universities of Cape Town, Durban-Westville, Toronto and Leipzig, at Vassar College, and at Rhodes and Yale University, he retired in 2014 from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry (1980), Xhosa Oral Poetry (1983) and Xhosa Poets and Poetry (2nd ed 2017), and has discovered, edited and translated Xhosa works by Nontsizi Mgqwetho (2007), Isaac Williams Wauchope (2008), W.W. Gqoba (2015), D.L.P. Yali-Manisi (2015), John Solilo (2016) and S.E.K. Mqhayi (2009 and 2017). An account of his twenty-nine-year association with Yali-Manisi, The Dassie and the Hunter, was published in 2005.
PAMELA MASEKO holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics in African Languages from Rhodes University. She taught at the University of Cape Town and currently teaches Sociolinguistics and Applied Language Studies, with a focus on Translation Studies, at Rhodes University. She has translated and adapted various literary fictional and non-fictional texts into isiXhosa, including texts in the Nelson Mandela Museum in Qunu, Mvezo and the Bhunga Building in Mthatha. With Jeff Opland she serves as General Editor of the Publications of The Opland Collection of Xhosa Literature.
WANDILE KUSE studied at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where, influenced by A.C. Jordan, he earned an MA on iziduko and izibongo and a PhD on S.E.K. Mqhayi. He returned to South Africa in 1983 as Director of the Bureau for African Research and Documentation at the University of Transkei and retired in 2001.