Subramaniam Krishnan, popularly known as K. S. Maniam, was born in a small village, Bedong, in rural Malaysia. His grandmother migrated from India to the Malay Peninsula in 1916. He started his schooling in a Tamil state school but later shifted to Ibrahim English School at Sungei Petani. Later, he came to India to study medicine, but soon after, he went to England to study teacher education at Malayan Teacher College in Wolverhampton at Brinsford Lodge. On completing the course, he returned to Malaysia where he taught in various rural schools until 1970 and received his BA and MA degree in English Literature from the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. In 1979, he was appointed lecturer in English at the University of Malaya from where he retired as an Associate Professor in 1997.