Nicholas Kerr was born in and has lived all his life in KwaZulu-Natal on the eastern seaboard of South Africa. He holds a B.A. Honours degree in Biblical Studies and a Masters in Linguistics – Intercultural Communication. He began his working life in agriculture, having been employed as a labourer in both KwaZulu-Natal and England when he visited that country as a young man. His main career, however, took a different turn when, after his tertiary studies, he was ordained into the ministry of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. A position he held for 36 years. Although now officially retired, he remains actively involved in Ministry.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, his home province endured deep socio-political divisions and widespread violence and many hundreds of sectarian killings which only began to subside after South Africa’s historic first democratic elections in 1994. During the unrest in and around his parish in Hillcrest and the adjacent ‘Valley of a Thousand Hills’ he formed the Thousand Hills Peace Committee with fellow clergy of different denominations, which ultimately persuaded the contesting political parties to sign a ‘peace agreement’ which helped to quell the bloodshed.

As well as his writing, Nicholas Kerr finds time for long distance running, gardening, reading – and he’s also, being fluent in isiZulu, a volunteer teacher at a local state school.