NoViolet Bulawayo shortlisted for Caine Prize 2011

The Caine 2011 Shortlist is out, and I am happy NoViolet Bulawayo is on the list, with her story "Hitting Budapest", originally published by the Boston Review. NoViolet, a writing colleague, has also published stories with Munyori Literary Journal twice, StoryTime and in several literary anthologies. She is definitely a rising Zimbabwean star, Below she talks about her writing.

1. Congratulations for appearing on the Caine shortlist. What's your reaction to the news?

I’m very happy you know; being shortlisted for a prize as major as Caine is a big deal. I’m even happier that there are many who are happy with me, it’s just great to see people rooting for you and I’d like to thank everyone for the love, especially my Zimbabwean peoples. This comes at the start of my writing career and so it definitely motivates me to keep pushing. I also welcome the news on behalf of my country of course, our absence from the Caine shortlists in recent years has really been a cause for concern; its nice that we’re back in the game though we’ve never really stopped playing and we wont stop. I’m hoping we can appear on the list and others more often.

2. What are your thoughts on the reception of African literature in USA?
There is some interest in African literature in the US, especially as the world is getting smaller and people are open to reading about other places. Academia and book clubs are definitely leading the readership but while this is always nice to see, I think it’s important at the same time that we don’t look too much to the US to discover our writers or receive them in certain ways so that we neglect to give our own some attention and support.

3. And this thing you call "penning Zimbabwe". What is it?
By “penning Zimbabwe” I mean writing the Zimbabwean story, as big and multi-dimensional as it is. There are quite a number of us, and we are all doing our thing from many corners of the world. We are different, and work differently of course; there is no way, for example, I could have written Dancing with Life or An Elegy for Easterly or “Mr Goop” or Uriah’s Vengeance, to mention but a few works, and knowing this makes me both appreciative and grateful to other writers for doing what they do and being who they are. Our diversity is worth celebrating, though what binds us is that at the end of the day we all have something to say about what it means to be Zimbabwean, whether we're even conscious of it or not.

Those of us writing away from home will inevitably be read as representative and speaking for everybody; it’s just what it is. In reality, though, we are only individuals writing from tiny experiences that only capture a tiny part of the full picture. I think it’s only when you consider our work as a collective that you can start to talk meaningfully about penning Zimbabwe and real representation, which is what I’m talking about.

4. Having followed your writing career, I see you as a rising star. What are you working on now?
I’ve only recently finished my novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, which I began in 2008. It’s been a long road but I feel like I finally have a draft, we’ll see how that goes. I have a couple of things up my sleeve but in the meantime I seem to be getting serious about a nonfiction project. Generally, I’m just enjoying being busy writing because this is what I signed up for.


The 2011 shortlist comprises:

NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’ from ‘The Boston Review’ Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010
Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from ‘Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda’ published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010
Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from ‘Bad Company’ published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008
Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from ‘The Bed Book of Short Stories’ published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010
David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’ from ‘The Mistress’s Dog: Short stories 1996-2010’ published by Picador Africa, 2010

The Caine Prize website reveals, "Selected from 126 entries from 17 African countries, the shortlist is once again a reflection of the Caine Prize’s pan-African reach. The winner of the £10,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 11 July."