Quote by Yvonne Vera: “We write to make sense of the world, to give voice to the voiceless.”

Authors create stories and texts to understand complex realities around them and to speak up for those who are marginalized or whose experiences have been ignored. Writing is an act of empowerment.

Vera was a prominent voice in post-colonial African literature, constantly reflecting on the role of storytelling in addressing historical injustices and giving agency to silenced narratives in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean novelist whose lyrical and often disturbing fiction addressed silence, violence, and the interior lives of Zimbabwean women. Her 1994 novel Nehanda drew on the life of the spirit medium who led the First Chimurenga uprising against British colonisation. She received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa and died in Toronto at forty in 2005.