Yvonne Vera
Vera was born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, on June 19, 1964. Between 1992, the year of her publishing debut (a short story collection entitled Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals), and her death in 2005, Vera published five novels: Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998) and The Stone Virgins (2002). She was the director of the National Gallery in her beloved Bulawayo and an activist on behalf of women’s rights. Vera belongs to the generation of Zimbabwean writers who emerged on the scene of African literature from the 1980s and the early 1990s following Zimbabwean independence in 1980 and the end of the second Chimurenga. Her work has achieved much recognition not only in Zimbabwe itself, but also overseas. Over the last decades, she has attained such an impressive international reputation. She died in Toronto on April 7, 2005, of AIDS related meningitis.
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