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Herald Correspondent
Zimbabwean writer, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma and American poet, essayist and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib, are among winners of the Lannan Literary Fellowship 2020.
They are among a group of six who were announced winners two weeks ago.
Tshuma is based in the United States and is the author of “Shadows” (2013), a novella and the novel, “House of Stone” (2018).
Abdurraqib, from Columbus, Ohio, is the author of the 2016 poetry collection, “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much” and the 2017 essay collection, “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us”.
There was no immediate reaction to the fellowship from Tshuma despite several attempts to reach her.
But last year Tshuma was winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award and winner of the Bulawayo Arts Award for Outstanding Fiction.
She was short-listed for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction; 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize; 2020 Balcones Fiction Prize; and long-listed for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize.
The Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowship were established in 1989 to honour both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional quality.
The awards recognise writers who have made significant contributions to English language literature, while the fellowships recognise writers of distinctive literary merit, who demonstrate the potential for continued outstanding work.
The other recipients making up the six announced are: Nguyen Phan Que; Rigoberto Gonzalez; Isabella Hammad; and Carolyn Forche.
Among previous recipients of the awards and fellowships have been Mahmoud Darwish, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Arundhati Roy, Bryan Stephenson, and Cornel West.
Online Reporter
Wenslus Murape