Dr Simon van Schalkwyk is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Studies at the School for Literature Language and Media at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research interests include modern and contemporary literature and poetry, with a particular focus on the American twentieth-century, transnational modernism and modernity, and contemporary South African literature.

He is currently preparing a monograph on Robert Lowell’s project of poetic translation (or “imitation”) within the context of Cold War containment culture. He currently acts as co-editor for Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies and as the academic editor for the Johannesburg Review of Books, an independent literary review based in South Africa that publishes reviews, essays, poetry, photographs and short fiction from South Africa, Africa, and beyond. His first collection of poetry, Transcontinental Delay, was published by Dryad Press in 2021.