Thembe Mvula is a South African/British poet, screenwriter and facilitator.

Thembe has headlined nationally and internationally as a performance poet, including at the Tate Modern, Oslo Afro Arts festival and has featured at Latitude and Cheltenham literature festivals. Her TEDx talk on The Power of Poetry and Vulnerability has been translated into Mandarin and Cantonese.

An alum of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, Barbican Young Poets, and the inaugural Obsidian Foundation retreat, Thembe’s work often unpacks, laments and celebrates all that is tied to home, relationships and self. Her debut poetry pamphlet, We that Wither Beneath, was self-published in 2019 with funding from Arts Council England. Listed in top 52 books of the year by the Poetry School, We that Wither Beneath was also shortlisted for the Melita Hume prize. Thembe’s poetry has recently appeared in Part of a Story That Started Before Me (Penguin Random House, 2023), Before Them, We (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2022), The Black Anthology (10:10 Press, 2021) Magma magazine issues 77 and 83. 

She recently completed a masters in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.