Glenn Moss was born in Pretoria in 1952. He obtained a BA, BA (hons) and MA at the University of Witwatersand, where he served as Wits chair of the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), and president of the Students Representative Council, in addition to a number of other student leadership positions.

Detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act in 1975, he was the first accused in the Nusas trial of 1976. He subsequently worked as a legal consultant in the defence of political trialists for a number of years, and was a founder editor of Work in Progress and the South African Review. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he was managing director of the Ravan Press publishing house, and served as chair of the Independent Publishers Association and as South African representative on the African Publishers Network (APNET).

Following South Africas first inclusive democratic elections, he was seconded to the Central Statistics Service (subsequently Statistics South Africa), where for 13 years he played a central role in transforming the Department and its outputs.

His latest project (2012) involves a book on the politics of the 1970s.