Ny Avana Ramanantoanina (1891–1940) was a Malagasy poet and playwright. He is among the most celebrated literary artists of Madagascar, principally renowned for his poetry, but also his stories and plays. He wrote during the colonial period and is considered to have been the first Malagasy writer to weave political messages into his work. He wrote primarily in the Malagasy language. A contemporary of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, who is commonly cited as the first African poet to write according to Western conventions, Ramanantoanina was highly critical of the French colonial authority. He was a member of the secret nationalist organization Vy Vato Sakelika, and was exiled to Mayotte in the Comoros when the organization was banned by the French colonial authority in 1917. His writings were consequently banned and were not reprinted until the 1980s in Madagascar. As a result, his writings are relatively less well known in international literary circles than those of Rabearivelo.

Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, born Joseph-Casimir Rabearivelo, was a Malagasy poet who is widely considered to be Africa's first modern poet and the greatest literary artist of Madagascar. Part of the first Malagasy generation raised under French colonization, Rabearivelo grew up impoverished and failed to complete secondary education. His passion for French literature and traditional Malagasy oral poetry (hainteny) prompted him to read extensively and educate himself on a variety of subjects, including the French language and its poetic and prose traditions. He published his first poems as an adolescent in local literary reviews, soon obtaining employment at a publishing house where he worked as a proofreader and editor of its literary journals. He published numerous poetry anthologies in French and Malagasy as well as literary critiques, an opera, and two novels.