SPC to feature Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalazi and US poet Ron Slate
October 11 is a big day at the Sacramento Poetry Center. We will host Christopher Mlalazi and Ron Slate. Mlalazi will be traveling from Pacific Palisades, California, and Slate from Milton, Massachusetts. They will read at 7:30 pm.
Villa Aurora’s 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow, Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalazi’s two books, Dancing with Life (2008, amaBooks), a collection of short stories, Many Rivers (2009, Lion Press, Ltd., UK), a novel, and his latest play Election Day (2010), deal with the social and political disintegration of his native Zimbabwe. In 2008 he was co-awarded the OXFAM NOVIP PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague, which he received with Raisedon Baya for their play The Crocodile of Zambezi. The Crocodile of Zambezi (2008), a satire of the Mugabe regime set in a fictional country along the Zambezi River, was officially banned and members of its cast and crew were harassed and beaten by state agents. Christopher Mlalazi’s work has received numerous honors and awards, including the ‘2009 Best First Published Creative Work, National Arts Merit Award in Zimbabwe’ for Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township, which also received the NOMA Award Honorable Mention(UK) in 2009; Many Rivers was shortlisted for the 2010 National Merit Award for Most Outstanding Book of Fiction. He has also published poetry in several international anthologies. Mr. Mlalazi has completed a new novel while in residence at Villa Aurora.
Ron Slate has published two books of poetry, both with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt -- The Incentive of the Maggot in 2005 and The Great Wave in 2010. The former was nominated for both the National Book Critics Circle and the Lenore Marshall prizes, and won the Bread Loaf Poetry Prize. He earned a masters degree in creative writing from Stanford in 1973 and went on to do his doctoral work in American literature at the University of Wisconsin. But from 1980 to 2000, he wrote no poetry. He made his living in the business world, running marketing and communications programs for large computer companies. At the moment he's writing a novel titled Out of Pocket about a playwright who could write only one play, and he reviews books at "on the Seawall," his book reviewery and homepage. He lives in Milton, Massachusetts.
Villa Aurora’s 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow, Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalazi’s two books, Dancing with Life (2008, amaBooks), a collection of short stories, Many Rivers (2009, Lion Press, Ltd., UK), a novel, and his latest play Election Day (2010), deal with the social and political disintegration of his native Zimbabwe. In 2008 he was co-awarded the OXFAM NOVIP PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague, which he received with Raisedon Baya for their play The Crocodile of Zambezi. The Crocodile of Zambezi (2008), a satire of the Mugabe regime set in a fictional country along the Zambezi River, was officially banned and members of its cast and crew were harassed and beaten by state agents. Christopher Mlalazi’s work has received numerous honors and awards, including the ‘2009 Best First Published Creative Work, National Arts Merit Award in Zimbabwe’ for Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township, which also received the NOMA Award Honorable Mention(UK) in 2009; Many Rivers was shortlisted for the 2010 National Merit Award for Most Outstanding Book of Fiction. He has also published poetry in several international anthologies. Mr. Mlalazi has completed a new novel while in residence at Villa Aurora. 
Ron Slate has published two books of poetry, both with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt -- The Incentive of the Maggot in 2005 and The Great Wave in 2010. The former was nominated for both the National Book Critics Circle and the Lenore Marshall prizes, and won the Bread Loaf Poetry Prize. He earned a masters degree in creative writing from Stanford in 1973 and went on to do his doctoral work in American literature at the University of Wisconsin. But from 1980 to 2000, he wrote no poetry. He made his living in the business world, running marketing and communications programs for large computer companies. At the moment he's writing a novel titled Out of Pocket about a playwright who could write only one play, and he reviews books at "on the Seawall," his book reviewery and homepage. He lives in Milton, Massachusetts.
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