Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration

Guest Speakers and Artists

Harare, 1986, with Charles Mungoshi.
Harare, 1986, with Charles Mungoshi.
© Ernst Schade.



Short bios of all presenters:

Afam Akeh is a poet and a journalist. The author of Stolen Moments, he has won awards in Nigerian journalism, a BBC Prize for African poetry and an Olaudah Equiano Prize for short fiction. Founding Editor of African Writing, he is currently with the Creative Writing programme of Oxford Brookes University. His poems and essays are in several anthologies and also literary locations online. He has been a guest poet at events, and also taught poetry for students and other interested budding poets (including recently asylum seekers) at workshops of the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and other Oxford schools.

Jennifer Armstrong is a PhD candidate in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia. She is originally from Zimbabwe, where she was born just after the declaration of UDI. She has spent much of her life making sense of the aftermath of the colonial influences in that country. She is very interested in how Marechera, in his mode of writing, is able to bring to the surface his acute sense of the otherwise submerged psychological aspects relating to the political, social and cultural conditions of his time and place. She has written an autobiography.

Lizzy Attree has a PhD from SOAS in London on ‘The Literary Response to HIV and AIDS in literature from Zimbabwe and South Africa’. Her most recent publication: “The Strong Healthy Man” is featured in Manning the Nation –Father figures in Zimbabwean literature and society (Weaver Press/Jacana, Zimbabwe/South Africa, 2007). She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

Raisedon Baya (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) is an award-winning writer for the stage and screen, art critic and television producer. His works have been produced by Amakhosi Theatre, Rooftop Promotions, and Siyaya Arts in Zimbabwe, and many have travelled abroad and been nominated for international awards. Baya has also written, directed and produced the award-winning television programmes Thubalami, King's Kraal, and Isililo for ZBH-TV. He is employed by ZBH as a commissioned Editor based at Montrose Studios.

For the last four years, Raisedon Baya has been writing the arts column for the Sunday News. His short stories have been published in several anthologies and international magazines. Baya is a former Crossing Borders participant and now mentors students in creative writing and performance under Power in the Voice, a British Council-sponsored poetry and spoken word project. He is also involved in Schools Playwrights and Actors Initiative (SPAI) with Nhimbe Trust. Raisedon Baya is a committee member of the Culture Fund Trust of Zimbabwe, Theatre Sub Sector. He is also the Chairman of the Theatre Sector, board member of the Intwasa Arts Festival KoBulawayo, and a media consultant for Umthwakazi Arts Festival.

Heeten Bhagat is a Zimbabwean. Trained initially as a pattern cutter for clothing, he entered the film industry in Zimbabwe as a costume designer. This afforded a first-hand training in filmmaking, which led to the formation of a production company, Masalamedia. His responsibilities include directing, shooting and editing of short experimental fiction films and documentaries. This lead to collaboration with the Zimbabwe International Film Festival Trust, at which he ran The Film Forum, the training and development arm of the Trust, in charge of providing year round workshops and training is all aspects related to filmmaking in Zimbabwe. In 2006, Heeten was awarded a Chevening scholarship by British Council Zimbabwe to read for an MA in Audio Visual Production at London Metropolitan University, during which he developed and realised innovative ways in which film can be more effective and responsive towards education in developing countries. On successful completion of the postgraduate degree, Heeten took up the position of Curator of The National Gallery of Zimbabwe. Currently, he is involved in a series of educational and cultural projects that are looking at building peace and stability in post-conflict Zimbabwe.

Elleke Boehmer was born of Netherlands parents in Durban, South Africa in 1961, and educated in South Africa, Canada, and Britain. To date she has published three widely praised novels, Screens against the Sky (1990), An Immaculate Figure (1993) and Bloodlines (2000), as well as short stories and memoir sketches. Internationally known for her research in international writing and postcolonial theory, she is the author of the world best-seller Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (1995, 2005), the monographs Empire, the National and the Postcolonial, 1890-1920 (2002) and Stories of Women (2005), and of the acclaimed edition of Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys (2004). Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford. Her most recent novel, Nile Baby, appeared in 2008, concurrently with her study of Nelson Mandela, coinciding with his 90th birthday.

Jane Bryce was born and brought up in Tanzania, and has since lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, where she did her doctoral research on Nigerian women's writing at Obafemi Awolowo University, 1983-88. Since 1992, she has taught African literature and cinema, and also creative writing, at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. She publishes in the areas of contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and was founder and Co-director of the Barbados Festival of African and Caribbean Film. She is the author of Chameleon (Peepal Tree Press, 2007) a collection of short fiction, and the editor of Caribbean Dispatches: Inside Stories of the Caribbean (Macmillan, 2006), and also contributes to newspapers and journals in the Caribbean and Nigeria. She is working on a memoir/travelogue/portrait of a place drawing on her memories and recent experience of Tanzania.

Julie Cairnie teaches postcolonial literature and theory in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph (Canada). Her first teaching experience--at Mutorashanga Secondary School in Zimbabwe--was more of a learning experience, and that experience continues to inform this seasoned teacher's pedagogy. She researches the ways in which various social categories(including childhood, race, gender, and class) inform colonial and postcolonialexperiences. An article on women's writing and land in Zimbabwe was recently published in "English Studies in Canada," and she is completing a book on “poor Whites” in South African and Zimbabwean literature.

David Caute has been a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a Henry Fellow at Harvard and a visiting professor at NYU, Columbia and the University of California. In recent years his academic work has focused on cultural aspects of the cold war, notably The Dancer Defects: the Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War, published in 2003 by OUP. Forthcoming this year will be Politics and the Novel During the Cold War, to be published by Transaction at Rutgers.

Following many visits to Zimbabwe during and after the civil conflict, he published Under the Skin: the Death of White Rhodesia and two novels, News from Nowhere and The K-Factor. He has now revised, updated and self-published in paperback Marechera and the Colonel, which he calls ‘an admiring but level-headed portrait of the young man and his work’ - as well as being a first-hand report of Zimbabwe’s crucial transitional years in the 1980s, based on despatches for the New Statesman, New Socialist and The Nation in New York.

Brian Chikwava is a London-based Zimbabwean writer. He was the winner of the 2004 Caine Prize for African writing for his short story "Seventh Street Alchemy" (published in Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe, Weaver Press, 2003). His first novel, Harare North, is published by Jonathan Cape in April 2009.

Samm Farai Monro, better known as Comrade Fatso, is one of the most popular and controversial poets in the Zimbabwe arts scene. Cde Fatso calls his poetry Toyi Toyi Poetry, radical street poetry that mixes Shona with English and mbira with hip hop. It is an art form that is an uprising against the bloody ZANU (PF) regime.

2008 has seen Comrade Fatso and his band Chabvondoka launch their much-acclaimed album, House of Hunger, banned in Zimbabwe but labeled by Agence France Presse as "the most revolutionary album since Thomas Mapfumo’s music in the 1970's." Fatso and Chabvondoka have performed extensively, having been invited to perform their riotous music at festivals in France, the UK, Holland, Kenya, Reunion, Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland and South Africa. Fatso’s poetry and music have appeared in print and broadcast media in over fifty countries around the world.

Not one to be confined, Fatso is also a political activist having founded MAGAMBA!, a cultural activist network that uses arts and culture in the struggle for justice in Zimbabwe. At the same time, he is a grassroots blogger whose blogs during the recent General Elections in Zimbabwe were warmly received by a global audience with his daily reports being used by CNN, BBC World Service and France 24.

James Currey is the founder of James Currey Publishers (www.jamescurrey.co.uk). He was the London editor of the Heinemann's African Writers Series from 1967 to 1984. He got the rapid support of Henry Chakava in Heinemann to accept the manuscript of The House of Hunger. He gave a copy to Doris Lessing, which resulted in the book becoming a joint winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. There is a full account (pages 279 to 295) of his adventures with Marechera in his recent history of the African Writers Series called Africa Writes Back (James Currey, 2008).

Memory Chirere has authored two short story books: Somewhere In This Country (Unisa Press) and Tudikidiki (Priority Publishing). Together with Prof. Maurice Vambe, he compiled and edited Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader (Prestige Books). Memory teaches African Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Zimbabwe's Department of English. He stays in Harare.

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. He studied literature at the University of Jos and taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi before moving to Lagos to work as a journalist. In Lagos he wrote his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2001. Waiting for an Angel has been translated into many languages including Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and French. In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. After his fellowship he enrolled for a PhD in Creative Writing. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and in 2006 he co-edited the British Council's anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in February 2007. He teaches Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and two children. He is currently working on a biography of Dambudzo Marechera for his PhD thesis with the University of East Anglia, UK. See also: www.helonhabila.com and Helon Habila on Dambudzo Marechera in Virginia Quarterly Review

Carolyn Hart is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, and Course Leader for the MA Creative Writing Programme, at London Metropolitan University. She has written two novels, Into the Silence: the fishing story and Aurora, and a collection of short stories, This Empty Room. She is working on a third novel, Waiting in the Rain. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals that are known for experimental writing such as Black Ice and Sniper Logic in the U.S. and Shearsman and Stride Magazine online (www.stridemagazine.co.uk) in the UK. She received a PhD from SOAS, University of London, in 2006, and an MA in African Studies from New York University in 2003. She also holds an MA in Creative Writing and a B.Mus. in Piano Performance, both from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She is currently writing a book entitled “Transgressive Texts: Production and Reception of African and Diasporic Literatures,” about innovations in the African and Diasporic literary field.

Gloria Huwiler was born in Lusaka, Zambia, to a Swiss German father and Zambian mother. Raised in Zambia and Namibia, Gloria completed secondary school in Africa, leaving at the age of seventeen to pursue acting training at Oxford School of Drama. After completing the foundation course at OSD, she read International Relations at Brown University, USA, where she was an active member of the theatre and filmmaking community, acting in several theatrical productions. In addition, she studied filmmaking and screenwriting, and wrote the short film Awoken upon her graduation. She currently resides in New York and is represented as an actress by Bill Treusch Management.

Sophie Lewis

A hybrid European student (/activist!) of literature at Wadham College, Oxford, whose background in theatre was located mainly around Geneva, Sophielle has directed and devised three productions at Oxford of which two were her own writing: Small Stylish Silver Deco (Burton Taylor Studio, autumn 2007), A memory a monologue (The Pilch, spring 2008) and Spring Quartet (Burton Taylor, summer 2008). She has been performing on stages of different ilk since she was seven. Now, alongside the campaigning around climate chaos that increasingly occupies most of her extra-academic time, she continues to write creatively, edit the transatlantic Wadham 'zine Call and Response, and practise dynamic meditations she fell in love with in India.

Victor Mavedzenge was born in Zimbabwe, educated in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Trained for a Diploma in Fine Arts. Has taught art, managed Artistic Projects and initiated and ran Zimbabwe's first Poetry Slam. Currently resides in London. www.victormavedzenge.com

Nhamo Anthony Mhiripiri is Senior Lecturer in Media and Society Studies at Midlands State University in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He is currently editing a collection of critical essays on Dambudzo Marechera, titled Speaking to; Living with Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century: A Critical Appraisal of his Life and Works. He has published critical works in Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera, edited by Flora Veit-Wild and Anthony Chennells, and in Maurice Vambe's The Hidden Dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina. He has short stories in No More Plastic Balls, A Roof to Repair and Creatures Great and Small. Another short story, "When Night Was Arrested" has recently been published in the anthology Dreams, Miracles and Jazz: New adventures in African Writing edited by Helon Habila and Kadija Sesay. No More Plastic Balls won the 2001 Zimbabwe Book Publisher's Award and is also amongst Zimbabwe's 75 Best Books of the Twentieth Century. Nhamo's latest work of fiction Temple of Rights is in the process of being published by Chimurenga Chimes Publishers.

Christopher Mlalazi (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) is a Zimbabwean writer whose works have been performed on stage, on television, and published in anthologies locally and internationally to consistently good reception. He has collaborated with Raisedon Baya on a number of projects, including the thirteen-episode television sitcom King's Kraal and the play The Crocodile of Zambezi (spring 2008), which was immediately stopped by the police and some members of the production abducted by the secret police and tortured. He is the country co-ordinator for Power In The Voice, a British Council spoken-word initiative. His short story collection, Dancing with Life and Other Short Stories, was recently published by ama'Books of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Tinashe Mushakavanhu was born in Harare, Zimbabwe. He graduated with a first class honours degree in English from the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe and was the first African to receive an MA in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Carmarthen in Wales. He has had short stories and poems published on three continents and is completing work on numerous manuscripts. From autumn 2008, he is starting an M.Phil. at the University of Kent in Canterbury, where he will be doing a comparative study of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dambudzo Marechera.

Peter Mutanda wa-Ndebele is a Zimbabwean filmmaker, play writer/director, poet, actor and a cultural activist based in Leeds, UK. After moving to South Africa in 1992, he formed Most United Knowledgeable Artists (M.U.K.A.) in 1995 and directed The Chain, which was awarded the best theatre play at Windybrow Centre for the Arts in 1996 in Johannesburg and toured the U.S.A. for 3 months. This marked the beginning of his 10-year spell of directing and producing M.U.K.A.’s classical theatre pieces, Harvest of Thorns, Survival, Crying Won’t Help, Wild Fire, Under the African Sky and touring abroad. In 2002, Peter published a book of poetry, Tears of Heart and in 2003 he was the co- producer of M.U.K.A.’s musical CD Voice of the soil. Peter has also worked under Terry George as an extras trainee director during the filming of Hotel Rwanda (Lions Gate Films, 2004). Due to the limitation of artistic freedom in Zimbabwe, he has decided to settle in the United Kingdom. He is the Artistic Director of Theatre Under Fire(T.U.F.), a Leeds-based theatre company. See also: www.petermutanda.com

Anias Mutekwa is a lecturer in the department of English and Communication, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe.His main interests are in postcolonial discourses,Zimbabwean and African literature, gender, spirituality and literature and second language pedagogy.He has writtern a number of articles in these areas.His current research is on gender in the media and spirit possession in literature.

Dr Alastair Niven OBE is Principal of Cumberland Lodge, Windsor. He has a Master’s degree from the University of Ghana, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar, and his doctorate is from the University of Leeds. He has held positions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, University of Warwick and University of Stirling. Between 1978 and 1984, he was Director General of the Africa Centre in London. He has been a Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London, and the Secretary General’s Assistant at the Association of Commonwealth Universities. Between 1987 and 2000, he served as Director of Literature at the Arts Council of England and consecutively at the British Council.

Dr Niven has published over 100 articles on aspects of Commonwealth and post colonial literature and on overseas student affairs. His books include two studies of D H Lawrence and two books on Indian writing. From 1979 to 1992, he was Editor of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. He was President of English PEN from 2003 to 2007 and in the past has been Chairman of the Southern African Development Education Trust, the Executive Committee of the United Kingdom Council for Overseas Student Affairs, and the Advisory Committee for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 1994 he served as a judge at the Booker Prize and he was a founder member of the Home Office Arts in Prison Committee.

Fisani Nkomo (born in 1971 in Mberengwa, Zimbabwe) is a self-trained artist specialising in abstract and mixed-media painting. His works discuss social, political and socio-economic issues. He has exhibited at the Harare International Festival of the Arts and National Gallery in Bulawayo, among others. He was the winner of the second prize at the 2005 Isigodlo Samakkhosi Exhibition.

Ery Nzaramba is a Rwanda-born actor, writer and director who studied in Belgium (Conservatoire Royale de Bruxelles) and UK (Birmingham School of Acting). Whilst studying in Birmingham, he wrote and directed his first short film, 'G54', a mockumentary that explores reasons behind the migration of young Africans to Europe. It was selected for the BeyondTV International Video Festival of 2006. Since graduation in 2007, Ery's credits as an actor include a national theatre tour and work for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Ery was recently given funding by the Oxford City Council and a Production Award by OFVM Film Oxford to make his next short film 'Annex', a psychological drama based on the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. The film was shot in July 2008, and will be released soon. More information about Ery's past, current and future projects in film, theatre, radio and other live performances can be found on his personal website: www.nzaramba.com

Nana Oforiatta-Ayim is a writer, curator and filmmaker. She has written for a number of publications including The Statesman, The Dubliner and The National Geographic. She has curated and organized events to do with the representation and Africa and the African diaspora at institutions such as The Royal Festival Hall, The Victoria and Albert Museum and The British Museum. Her documentary films have been shown as part of exhibitions including at The Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco and have been nominated for awards at various festivals, such as The Milan African Film Festival and The RAI Ethnographic Film Festival. She is currently a PhD student at SOAS researching the aesthetics of drum poetry in Ghana.

David Pattison has written extensively on Dambudzo Marechera and his book No Room for Cowardice (Africa World Press, 2001) is a full-length study of the writer's life and work. David has also published three collections of poetry and a novel. His plays have been performed throughout the UK and in the USA and Zimbabwe. He lives in Hull, UK. For more about David, see www.wotlarx.com

Dobrota Pucherova has recently submitted her PhD thesis in the English Faculty at University of Oxford. Her thesis explores the evolving constructions of African identity in authors such as Mongane Serote, Ingrid Jonker, Wopko Jensma, Bessie Head, Dambudzo Marechera, Yvonne Vera, Kabelo Sello Duiker, Achmat Dangor, and Ishtiyaq Shukri. She is interested in translating between the media and has enjoyed adapting Marechera's prose and poetry for the stage. She hails from Bratislava, Slovakia.

Ernst Schade (1949, The Netherlands) received training in tropical agriculture. For 16 years he worked in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique with governmental institutions and non-governmental organizations in rural development programmes. From 1989 till 1995 he was Resident Representative for the Norwegian Save the Children (Redd Barna) in Mozambique.

Self-taught in photography.

Since 1995 he lives in Lisboa, Portugal. Photography is now his main activity. He is represented by the photo agencies Panos Pictures (UK) and Hollandse Hoogte (The Netherlands).

Press publications world-wide. Co-author with Flora Veit-Wild of Dambudzo Marechera 1952-1987 (ISBN 0-7974-0828-X). Contributions to other books by Flora Veit-Wild on the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera; on child rights and on Zimbabwean sculpture (the Tengenenge sculptors' community).

Exhibitions: Scandinavia (on children of Mozambique), Lisboa, Carcavelos. In preparation: Bissau (Guinea-Bissau), Barcelona.

www.ernstschade.com

Tiro Sebina is a Lecturer in the department of English at the University of Botswana. His main academic interests are in classical and modern literary theories, cultural studies and postcolonial literatures, particularly African. Recent publications include articles and chapters on Dambudzo Marechera and Bessie Head. He co-edited Sunscapes: An Anthology of Botswana Short Stories (2007), The Study and Use of English in Africa (2006), Articulate Anguish: Dambudzo Marechera’s ‘Throne of Bayonets’, a multilingual anthology; Poetry in 1001 languages (1998), and co-published a collection of poetry. Dreams of Enduring Joy (2004). His poetry also appears in collections I have Crossed an Ocean (2004), Anthology of Botswana Poetry in English (2002) and in journals such as Avocado, Mokwadi, Marang, Poetry Institute of Africa Anthology of African Verse, PoetryMine and Wordplay. Some of his poems are in CD- compilations; Coventration (2004) and New October Poets: Flo Flava One (2003). His book reviews and literary journalism appear in Wasafiri journal, Pula Journal of African Studies, Botswana Notes and Records, Mmegi Newspaper and The Sunday Standard Newspaper. He writes a weekly column, Culture of the Ordinary, for The Sunday Standard. He is completing a doctoral dissertation on the articulation of anguish in Marechera’s fiction.

Patrick J. Ssenjovu is an actor of both stage and screen, a writer and director. He was born in Kayunga district, central Uganda, in eastern Africa. At age fourteen he became the youngest member of Impact International dance and theatre troupe, performing throughout Europe and the United States. He then made New York his theatre home, becoming a member of the Great Jones Repertory Company and working with such people as Meredith Monk, Ellen Stewart, Ping Chong, Seth Barish and Robert Wilson. Performing at venues including Lincoln Center, N.J.P.A.C., La MaMa E.T.C., Ohio Theatre and St. Anne's Warehouse. In film, he has been featured in Michael Hoffman’s Game 6 and Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter.

Drew Shaw is a London-based Zimbabwean teaching in the National and International Literatures in English (NILE) MA programme at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. He holds a particular interest in Zimbabwean literary and cultural studies, and has written extensively on issues of postcoloniality, sexuality and Dambudzo Marechera. He completed his PhD thesis, ‘Transgresssion and Beyond: Dambudzo Marechera and Zimbabwean Literature’, at Queen Mary, University of London, and is soon to publish Transgressive Sexuality and Postcolonial Identity: Dambudzo Marechera and crossing the boundaries of Zimbabwean literature and culture. Additionally, he has published chapters on the author in Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera (eds. Flora Veit-Wild and Anthony Chennells), in Body, Sexuality and Gender: Versions and Subversions of African Literature (eds. Flora Veit-Wild and Dirk Naguschewski) and in Zimbabwe in Crisis: The International Response and the Space of Silence (eds. Ranka Primorac and Stephen Chan).

Flora Veit-Wild is Professor of African Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University, Berlin. Her research interests include Anglophone writing of Southern Africa, francophone writing of Central Africa, surrealism, body concepts, urban language and literature as well as writing in African languages. Her major publications include: Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers: A Social History of Zimbabwean Literature (1992), Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on his Life and Work (1992), Writing Madness: Borderlines of the Body in African Literature (2006).

Jonathan Zilberg was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. He received his doctorate in "Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture: The Invention of a Shona Tradition" in 1996 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently lives in Indonesia, where he is studying pornography. He is Affiliate Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a regular reviewer for Leonardo, the Arts and Sciences journal, and an honorary curator at Tikar Pandan in Banda Aceh. See Jonathan Zilberg at Illinois and Jonathan Zilberg at Leonardo.

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