Richard Poplak was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and immigrated to Canada with his family a few short months before Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. Richard trained as a filmmaker and fine artist at Montreal’s Concordia University and has produced and directed numerous short films, music videos and commercials.

Now a full-time writer, Richard can be found learning to play polo, chasing Big Game in Africa, investigating German sub-sub cultures in Namibia, eating at TGI Fridays in the Middle East, bowling in Kazakhstan, racing Mercedes sports sedans in Russia - all for publications as diverse as THIS Magazine, Toronto Life, The Globe & Mail, CBC.ca/arts, Bicycling and Maverick.

His first book, Ja. No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-era South Africa has just been published by Penguin Books Canada; his follow-up, entitled The Sheik's Batmobile: Trawling for North American Pop-Culture in the Middle East, will be on shelves Fall, 2008.

More information can be found about Richard Poplak on his website: www.richardpoplak.com

Reviews:

"Devastating detail comes via vivid and passionate prose. Brilliant."
     - NNNNN (highest rating) Now Magazine

"Breezy and brilliant. No yes-man could be this funny, or this wise"
     - John Allemang The Globe & Mail

"Poplak stitches together the insults and indignities - mundane, suburban, absurd, tragic - of apartheid in its horrible death throes with such skill, such honesty and above all, such drop-everything-and-laugh-out-loud humour that I found myself having to re-read whole passages just to see what they sounded like without my shrieks of laughter thrown in. Apartheid was a disgusting experiment but Poplak’s bottom’s up view shows how it was able to work for so long - the complicit agreement of so many to be so violent for so long. Ja. No, Man is an absolute must-read for anyone who was there, anyone who wants to know what it was like to be there and anyone who hopes we never go there again - in other words, a must-read for everyone."
     - Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight