Sidney Honorary Fellow and Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga is a recipient of a £120,000 grant, as the award marks its 10th anniversary.
For the past decade the Windham-Campbell award has celebrated eight writers each year for their achievements in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. The large grants given to winners are intended to support their writing and allow them to focus on their work independent of financial concerns.
PEN Pinter prizewinning Dangarembga’s debut novel Nervous Conditions was the first book to be published in English by a black woman from Zimbabwe. In September 2020 the writer-cum-activist’s novel This Mournable Body was longlisted for the Booker prize in the same week she was arrested during peaceful anti-corruption protests in Harare – she remains on remand.
When she found out that the judges – who remain anonymous throughout the process – had chosen her for the Windham-Campbell prize, Dangarembga admitted she had been waiting for this news her entire life, “not always believing but constantly hoping”.
Dangarembga said: “I desperately needed this award, as a writer working on the African continent. Few countries support creativity or the arts in a meaningful manner. Zimbabwe is amongst those that do so least.”
“Now I will at last be able to slow down and breathe and contemplate my universe, allowing me do the work I want to do in the way I want to do it,” she added. “So basically the award is life giving.”
Many congratulations to Dangarembga and the rest of the prize-winners.
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