Lina Spies

Carellina Pieternella (Lina) Spies (born 6 March 1939 in Harrismith, in North-Eastern Free State South Africa) is an Afrikaans poet and academic.

She received both the 1972 Eugène Marais Prize and 1972 Ingrid Jonker Prize,^[1] 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 (South African Academy of Arts and Sciences).

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 (now Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University), the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University. An authority on the work of Elisabeth Eybers, Martinus Nijhoff, D.J. Opperman and Hennie Aucamp, Spies was Professor of Afrikaans and Dutch Literature at Stellenbosch University between 1987 and her retirement in 1999. She still lives in the town of Stellenbosch.^[2]