Tinashe Mushakavanhu Interviews Chris Mlalazi

Tinashe Mushakavanhu: Ruby Magosvongwe of the University of Zimbabwe has described “Zimbabwe as a short story country.” Do you agree/disagree? Why?

Chris Mlalazi: It depends on the context this was said. Yes, Zimbabwe is currently producing a lot of short story anthologies, but this is only so, because as Irene Staunton of Weaver Press once remarked, publishing multi-authored anthologies is a chance for many writers to be published during a period of crisis, rather than publishers investing scant resources on single writers. There are many writers in the country with novel manuscripts – in fact, about 90% of the writers who have their short stories published have novel manuscripts waiting for publishers. Are we saying when our economic situation improves and the novels
start coming out Zimbabwe will become a novel? I guess what Ruby Magosvongwe meant is that
currently Zimbabwe is publishing a lot of short stories and not that writers are writing short stories only.

Read the whole interview on ArtsInitiates.

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