Yvonne Vera

Yvonne Vera (1964-2005), an award-winning novelist and innovative museum director was the winner of the first Macmillan Writer’s Prize for The Stone Virgins. In 1999, Vera was the recipient of Sweden’s ‘Voice of Africa’ award. In 1997, her novel Under the Tongue won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, African Region. She was awarded the Zimbabwean Publisher’s Literary Award for the best novel in 1996 and 1997. Vera is also the author of the novels Butterfly Burning, Without a Name and Nehanda. Why Don’t you Carve Other Animals is her collection of short stories. She was the Editor of Opening Spaces – an anthology of contemporary writing by African women, published by Heinemann, U.K. Her works have been translated into several languages including German, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian. Yvonne Vera was a doctoral graduate of York University in Canada and worked as the Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo.