Brent Meersman has been the performing arts critic for the national weekly newspaper, the Mail and Guardian since 2002, writing on national cultural issues and reviewing on a weekly basis theatre, ballet, opera and dance in Cape Town. In 2008 he started a new column, Once Bitten, reviewing food in Cape Town restaurants for the M&G.
He has been editor of Cue, the daily newspaper for the National Arts Festival and also lectured Arts Journalism at the University of Cape Town in the Film and Media Studies Department.
A member of the International Association of Theatre Critics he is a regular speaker at international theatre festivals in Europe.
From 1991 to 2002 he was Managing Director of a 32-bed guest house and conference centre, and so has had first hand experience of running his own restaurant.
In the 2004 South African general election he was the national campaign manager for the Independent Democrats and then served as Patricia de Lille’s chief of staff in Parliament for 6 months. His novel published lin 2007, Primary Coloured, was inspired by that experience.
His latest novel, Report Before Daybreak (Umuzi, 2011) deals with South Africa during the 1980s. He is a passionate traveller, having visited more than 50 countries, and has journeyed around every continent, including earlier this year (2009), the Antarctic.