Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the early 1950s, Anne Kellas grew up in an apartheid regime. Her work was first published in 1979 and she belonged to a group of writers known as the 'Circle of Eight' who met at the home of Lionel Abraham, poet and publisher .
Shortly after the first emergency in South Africa was declared, she and her husband, journalist Giles Hugo, and their two children left South Africa for Australia, where they settled in Tasmania. Kellas has worked in on-line publishing and as co-editor with Hugo of the e-journal The Write Stuff , and as poetry editor of The Famous Reporter. Poems from Mt Moono was published in 1989, containing work written prior to emigrating to Australia in 1986. 'Introduction to the Author', an introductory poem by Lionel Abrahams, is a biographical statement about Kellas. The book ends with a suite of 'Tasmanian poems'. Isolated States was published in 2001, containing early work written in the UK in the 1970s as well as later work written in Tasmania, and ends with a suite of 'Johannesburg poems'.
Her work has been published in South Africa in Quarry, Sesame and much later, after emigrating, in the anthologies A Writer In Stone (David Philip, Cape Town, 1998) and Like a House on Fire (COSAW, Johannesburg, 1994) as well as in the Columbia (NY) feature on South African writing in 1986.
