We Need New Names (Bulawayo) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—Tsholotsho, Zimbabwe
• Education—B.A., M.A., Texas A&M; M.F.A., Cornell University
• Awards—Caine Prize for African Writing; National Book Awards
   "5 Under 35" Award
• Currently—lives in California


NoViolet Bulawayo (pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele) is a Zimbabwean author and Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (2012–2014).

NoBulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe and attended Njube High School and later Mzilikazi High School for her A levels. She began her college education in the US, studying at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from Texas A&M University-Commerce and Southern Methodist University respectively.

In 2010, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Cornell University, where her work was recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship.

NoViolet's short story "Hitting Budapest" won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her other work has been shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN Studzinsi Award, and has appeared in Callaloo, The Boston Review, Newsweek, and The Warwick Review, as well as in anthologies in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the UK.

Her 2013 novel entitled We Need New Names was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. This makes her the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for that prize.

She has begun work on a memoir project. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher Retrieved 10/29/2013.)