BY SHARON SIBINDI
ZIMBABWEAN author and Iowa Writers’ Workshop 2015 graduate Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is scheduled to roll out a project dubbed Kwantuthu Writers’ Workshop to inspire and nurture young writers and foster related cultural activities.
The project was inspired by Tshuma’s experiences from her early days as an aspiring writer in Zimbabwe to her time in South Africa and the United States as well as her numerous travels across the world.
Tshuma told NewsDay Life & Style that the workshop would be a week-long set of intensive lectures that will be held annually in Zimbabwe.
“The workshop aims to bring established writers from Zimbabwe, Africa and the rest of the world to Zimbabwe’s artistic hotbed, Bulawayo, to nurture writing talent and enrich it through cultural exchanges, she said.
“The workshop is a space for emerging writers to convene and learn from more seasoned writers and other cultural practitioners.”
Tshuma said the workshop will commence next year and applications for fiction and non-fiction workshops would open at the beginning of June 2020.
“The inaugural workshop will take place from August 3 to 9 next year and workshops are free and open to all those interested in applying. Writers from across Zimbabwe, as well as outside Zimbabwe, are encouraged to apply,” she said.
“There will be scholarships for selected applicants coming from outside Bulawayo. Food, transport costs in and around Bulawayo, and working materials will be provided for all participants.”
She said applicants were encouraged to prepare a sample of their best work, fiction or non-fiction, of not more than 1 000 words and a short personal statement of 300 words giving insight into their artistic journey.
Tshuma said her dream was to turn the workshop into an annual event since it was essential to keep conversations and cross-fertilisation of ideas among artistes running. Tshuma is the author of the short story collection Shadows and novel House of Stone, in which she re-enacts the Gukurahundi killings in Matabeleland and the Midlands in the early 1980s.
