NoViolet Bulawayo

NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele (born 12 October 1981), a Zimbabwean author.

In 2010, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Cornell University, where her work was recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship.

In 2011, she won the Caine Prize with her story "Hitting Budapest", which had been published in the November/December 2010 issue of the Boston Review and became the opening chapter of her 2013 debut novel.

In 2011, it was reported that she had begun work on a memoir project.

In 2012, the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" honoree.

Her debut novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and her second novel, Glory, was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making her "the first Black African woman to appear on the Booker list twice".

Bulawayo was born in Tsholotsho Zimbabwe, and attended Njube High School and later Mzilikazi High School for her A-levels.

She completed her college education in the United States, studying at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, and earning bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Texas A&M University-Commerce and Southern Methodist University, respectively.

We Need New Names was included in the 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist, making Bulawayo the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the prize.

She also won the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, among other accolades.

She was named one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2014.

Bulawayo sat on the board of trustees of the pan-African literary initiative Writivism between 2014 and 2018.

Published in 2022, her second novel Glory – inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm and about a nation on the cusp of revolution – was written over more than three years, during which Bulawayo "closely followed the grass roots activism demanding change in countries including Sudan, Algeria, Uganda, Eswatini and the United States, where the Black Lives Matter movement surged."

Glory was described by The Conversation as "unforgettable" and "an instant Zimbabwean classic".

Reviewing the novel for The Guardian, Sarah Ladipo Manyika concluded: "Bulawayo doesn't hold back in speaking truth to power. She writes urgently and courageously, holding up a mirror both to contemporary Zimbabwe and the world at large. Her fearless and innovative chronicling of politically repressive times calls to mind other great storytellers such as Herta Müller, Elif Shafak and Zimbabwean compatriot Yvonne Vera. Glory, with a flicker of hope at its end, is allegory, satire and fairytale rolled into one mighty punch."

Glory was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.

NoViolet Bulawayo's pen name is derived from the Ndebele word for 'with', the name of her late mother and the city of Bulawayo.