The 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing Workshop is currently taking place in Zimbabwe. Ahead of the event, Fungai Machirori conducted a few interviews with Zimbabwean writers and publishers, as well as Caine Prize Director, Lizzy Attree. Fungai’s article of what was discussed can be found here. “Realising how much great content would go to waste from what was left out of the article,” Fungai Machirori says, ” I have decided to share the full transcripts of my conversations.” The first of such conversations has already published here. In the following conversation, Fungai speaks “to 26-year-old Novuyo Rosa Tshuma about what becoming a writer entails and means to her.”
Fungai Machirori(FM): You took part in the Caine Prize Workshop in 2010. Would you say it benefitted you in terms of your writing and exposure? Can you explain?
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (NRT): It did benefit my writing. I was 22 at the time, and that setting where writers have their works read and critiqued by fellow participants, as well as the one on one sessions with the animateurs, was useful to my story and my writing process.
FM: You have gone on to write a novella. Did you ever think of publishing it in Zimbabwe? What were the factors that led to your not doing so?
NRT: I sent the novella to several publishers, including publishers in Zimbabwe. Publishers in Zimbabwe were not interested in publishing it; interestingly, publishers in South Africa were more receptive to the work. However, frustratingly, they (South African publishers) kept saying the same thing; though they liked the work, the market was currently precarious, and their focus was specifically on the South African market, while my novella took place primarily in Zimbabwe.
I got many rejections during this time, and it was a frustrating period. However, I kept sending out the work.
