Yvonne Vera

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yvonne Vera (September 19, 1964 - April 7, 2005) was an award-winning author from Zimbabwe.

Yvonne was raised in Zimbabwe, she left in 1987 to attend York University, Toronto.

She wrote a number of books, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1997), Butterfly Burning (2000), and The Stone Virgins (2002). Without a Name was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa, and The Stone Virgins (2002) was awarded the Macmillan Writers' Prize for Africa. Additionally, in 2004 she was awarded the Swedish PEN Tucholsky Prize "for a corpus of works dealing with taboo subjects".

Until her death, she was director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, a gallery which showcases local talent ranging from that of professional artists to school children.

Her novels are known for their poetic prose, difficult subject-matter, and their strong women characters, and are firmly rooted in Zimbabwe's difficult past. For these reasons, she has been widely studied and appreciated by those studying postcolonial African literature.

Vera died in Canada on April 7, 2005 of AIDS-related meningitis^[1].