Marion Molteno grew up in South Africa and left after being involved in student protests against the apartheid regime.

She has pioneered education projects in multi-ethnic communities, was the founder of the South London Refugee Project, and has been a policy advisor with Save the Children, supporting projects with vulnerable children in over 50 countries.

Her fiction draws inspiration from the cross-cultural range of her life experience. Her latest novel, Uncertain Light was a finalist in the Indie Book Awards, 2016. Set among international development workers, it follows events sparked by the abduction of a UN peace negotiator in Tajikistan, and was described by Alistair Niven, judge of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, as ‘a moving and necessary book.’ If You Can Walk, You Can Dance won a Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best book in the Africa region, and was selected in the top 20 titles of the year for the New Zealand Women's Book Festival. The story of a young woman's life on the run across frontiers and life-styles, it is also an exploration of the power of music in all cultures. A Shield of Coolest Air, set among Somali refugees in London, won the David St John Thomas Award. Somewhere More Simple, set on the Isles of Scilly, explores relationships among outsiders in a small community cut off from the mainland. Her short story collection, A Language in Common, reflects the experiences of the first generation of South Asian women in Britain, and was translated into five languages including three South Asian languages. 'The Bracelets' was a winner in the London short story competition.

She studied at the School of Oriental & African Studies & the Institute of Education, University of London, and the Universities of Manchester and Cape Town. She has written and lectured widely on language, culture and education; her books for development practitioners have been translated into many languages and are used across the world. She is the literary executor for the work of Ralph Russell, scholar and translator of Urdu literature: the most recent publication is The Famous Ghalib: The Sound of My Moving Pen.