Two Zimbabwean Writers Awarded North American Residencies
Christopher Mlalazi is coming to California for a Feuchtwanger Fellowship, a nine-month residency for a writer at the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades. The selection committee for the Hellman/Hammett grant programme, which is managed by Human Rights Watch, was asked to suggest a writer for the Fellowship and Christopher was selected. This is great news for Chris and Zimbabwean writing. Mlalazi is one of busiest writers of Zimbabwe, and this residency is well-deserved.
The Villa Aurora is the former home of exiled German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. It is now an international meeting place and artists residence that fosters exchange in the fields of literature, music, art, and film. It was set up as a living memorial to artists and intellectuals who found refuge from Nazi Germany in Southern California. It also commemorates the role that these exiles played in shaping art and culture in their new home.
Mlalazi has published books with amaBooks in Zimbabwe and Lion Press in the UK. His novel, Many Rivers (Lion Press), was shortlisted for the NAMA award, and his collection of short stories, Dancing with Life, received the NAMA in 2009 and an honourable mention in the NOMA Award for African writing (2009). His play, Election Day, is running at Amakhosi Theatre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and the short story version is featured in the current Munyori Literary Journal.
Ignatius Mabasa, author of Mapenzi, Ndafa Here, The Man, the Shaggy Leopard, and the Jackal, all of which won the NAMA, has been awarded the competitive Canadian University of Manitoba’s 2010 Writer/Storyteller-in-Residence position. The residency runs from September to December. Mabasa will be writing, holding workshops,telling stories, and lecturing on writing.
In an email to Mabasa, the Director of the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Warren Cariou wrote: “I'm very pleased to tell you that we have chosen your application as the best of an extraordinary field of applicants for our 2010 Writer/Storyteller-in-Residence position. We feel that your work is a perfect fit for the Centre's mandate and we were very impressed with your credentials in every respect.”
Last year Mabasa performed at the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. I caught him reading in the down SF Public Library; actually I entered the room when his introduction was just getting concluded, but he ended up introducing me before he started performing. It was a nice reunion after more than twelve years.
These two awards are very important in that we can count on something great coming out of them; these two writers, these two friends of mine, have an undying love for writing, and I can just imagine what nine months of fulltime writing will do to Mlalazi's writing. And as for Mabasa's three month at Manitoba...I can just imagine.
Talking of Zimbabwean writers coming to California, let me add that Petina Gappah will be in Los Angeles for the LA Times Book Award ceremony. Her collection Elegy for Easterly has been shortlisted for this important award, after it recently won the Gurdian First Book Award. I have learned that Chris Mlalazi may attend the LA event too..., so I am already planning to travel to LA to witness this great moment....
Chris Mlalazi in California....a braai such as ones he describes in Dancing with Life may finally happen in the Golden State.
I like this American shift that Zimbabwean literature is taking. And as I conclude this post, I am already thinking about contacting Chenjerai Hove to hear how things are in Miami. Recently, I saw an article about him in the Miami Herald.
The Villa Aurora is the former home of exiled German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. It is now an international meeting place and artists residence that fosters exchange in the fields of literature, music, art, and film. It was set up as a living memorial to artists and intellectuals who found refuge from Nazi Germany in Southern California. It also commemorates the role that these exiles played in shaping art and culture in their new home.
Mlalazi has published books with amaBooks in Zimbabwe and Lion Press in the UK. His novel, Many Rivers (Lion Press), was shortlisted for the NAMA award, and his collection of short stories, Dancing with Life, received the NAMA in 2009 and an honourable mention in the NOMA Award for African writing (2009). His play, Election Day, is running at Amakhosi Theatre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and the short story version is featured in the current Munyori Literary Journal.
Ignatius Mabasa, author of Mapenzi, Ndafa Here, The Man, the Shaggy Leopard, and the Jackal, all of which won the NAMA, has been awarded the competitive Canadian University of Manitoba’s 2010 Writer/Storyteller-in-Residence position. The residency runs from September to December. Mabasa will be writing, holding workshops,telling stories, and lecturing on writing.
In an email to Mabasa, the Director of the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Warren Cariou wrote: “I'm very pleased to tell you that we have chosen your application as the best of an extraordinary field of applicants for our 2010 Writer/Storyteller-in-Residence position. We feel that your work is a perfect fit for the Centre's mandate and we were very impressed with your credentials in every respect.”
Last year Mabasa performed at the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. I caught him reading in the down SF Public Library; actually I entered the room when his introduction was just getting concluded, but he ended up introducing me before he started performing. It was a nice reunion after more than twelve years.
These two awards are very important in that we can count on something great coming out of them; these two writers, these two friends of mine, have an undying love for writing, and I can just imagine what nine months of fulltime writing will do to Mlalazi's writing. And as for Mabasa's three month at Manitoba...I can just imagine.
Talking of Zimbabwean writers coming to California, let me add that Petina Gappah will be in Los Angeles for the LA Times Book Award ceremony. Her collection Elegy for Easterly has been shortlisted for this important award, after it recently won the Gurdian First Book Award. I have learned that Chris Mlalazi may attend the LA event too..., so I am already planning to travel to LA to witness this great moment....
Chris Mlalazi in California....a braai such as ones he describes in Dancing with Life may finally happen in the Golden State.
I like this American shift that Zimbabwean literature is taking. And as I conclude this post, I am already thinking about contacting Chenjerai Hove to hear how things are in Miami. Recently, I saw an article about him in the Miami Herald.
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