Joha van Dyk is an author, born and raised along the Namaqualand West Coast where she was surrounded by storytellers. She grew up on a farm, Steenvlei, and spent her time playing outside, daydreaming and reading. The guesthouse, Die Houthoop, that her parents run on the farm also introduced her to a vast array of characters and scenarios that kept her imagination tempered. At eight years old she opened her first Word Document on a PC her brother had rebuilt and began typing away.

She spent her teen years falling in love with Stellenbosch, where she attended high school at Hoërskool Stellenbosch. While in school she was involved in drama, the Culture Committee, school paper and acted as stage manager for her school theatre groups. Between classes she listened to music on her earphones and in classes she always had a scrap paper beside her work to write her stories while pretending to pay attention.

In 2018, she graduated from Stellenbosch University with her BA Humanities and in 2019 she received a Cum-Laude for her Honours degree in English Studies. During 2020 she completed her Masters in English Studies, a project which required that she write short stories centred on the small, abandoned company town, Kleinzee. This dissertation was also awarded a Cum-Laude. Currently she is registered for her PhD in English Studies and is once again bringing focus back to Namaqualand’s manner of anecdotal storytelling, with a specific focus on Kleinzee.

In 2017 five of her poems were published in the student poetry anthology, Penseel. Her poem, “Polsslag”, was also published in the anthology, Die Môre Is Jy. In 2021 three of her poems were published in Penseel and in 2022 her poems, “ek sien jou in kerkstraat” en “dit was hier” was published on Versindaba. Her debut Young Adult novel, Branderjaer, was published in October 2020 by Human&Rousseau. The sequel, Vuurvreter, was published in June 2022 by Human&Rousseau.