Borders Literature Online

Lorato Trok's Biography

Lorato Trok picture

She is currently a Managing Editor at Puku Children’s Literature Foundation. Lorato is a published author of 16 children’s picture books and biographer of Young Adults non-fiction books, originated in both Setswana and English and translated into other South African languages.

She is a two-times recipient (2017 and 2020) of the Association of Non-Fiction and Academic Authors of South Africa (ANFASA) writing grant, supported by the Norwegian Embassy to write a series of young adult biographies the first is of Rosina Sedibane Modiba, South Africa’s first Black female athlete to compete against white athletes during the apartheid years and set multiple records.  The second book in this series of unsung heroes is The Forgotten Scientist: The Story of Saul Sithole (Jacana Media, 2020). It is about the untold story of a pioneering black scientist who made a great contribution to the fields of anthropology and ornithology in South Africa. In 2005 Lorato was invited to help launch the “Reading Africa” programme at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

In 2019 she was one of the authors commissioned to translate selected English prose works from English to Setswana by Sol Plaatje University’s Repatriation of Letters project. She translated award winning author Lesego Kagiso Molope’s This Book Betrays my Brother from English to Setswana.

Lorato is a member of IBBY SA Executive and heads the membership portfolio. She is a board member of the Pan South African Language Board (Setswana National Language Body) and its committee member of Literature and Media.