Lina Spies


Carellina Pieternella Spies is an Afrikaans poet and academic.
She received both the 1972 Eugène Marais Prize and 1972 Ingrid Jonker Prize, for her first volume of poetry, Digby vergenoeg. Her translation of Anne Frank's diaries was awarded the translation prize by the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns.
Spies studied philosophy, languages and literature at Stellenbosch University, the Free University of Amsterdam and the University of Pretoria. She spent most of her career as a university lecturer, variously at the University of Port Elizabeth, the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University. From 1987 she was Professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature at Stellenbosch University until her retirement in 1999. She still lives in the town of Stellenbosch.

Volumes of poetry