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:

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.

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 new novel, Nile Baby, appears this year, concurrently with her study of Nelson Mandela, to coincide with his 90th birthday in July.

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.

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.

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

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

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 is a PhD student in the English Faculty at University of Oxford. Her thesis explores the evolving constructions of African identity in southern African writing from 1960 to present, by authors such as Mongane Serote, Ingrid Jonker, Wopko Jensma, Bessie Head, Dambudzo Marechera, Yvonne Vera, Kabelo Sello Duiker, Achmat Dangor, and Ishtiyaq Shukri. 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

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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