29 Facts About Tsitsi Dangarembga

Tsitsi Dangarembga was born on 4 February 1959 and is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker.

Tsitsi Dangarembga has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize.

In 2022, Dangarembga was convicted in a Zimbabwe court of inciting public violence, by displaying, on a public road, a placard asking for reform; her conviction was later overturned.

Tsitsi Dangarembga was born on 4 February 1959 in Mutoko, Southern Rhodesia, a small town where her parents taught at the nearby mission school.

Tsitsi Dangarembga, who had begun her education in England, enrolled at Hartzell Primary School, before going to board at the Marymount Mission convent school.

Tsitsi Dangarembga completed her A-Levels at Arundel School, an elite, predominantly white girls' school in the capital, Salisbury, and in 1977 went to the University of Cambridge to study medicine at Sidney Sussex College.

Tsitsi Dangarembga worked briefly as a teacher, before taking up studies in medicine and psychology at the University of Zimbabwe while working for two years as a copywriter at a marketing agency.

Tsitsi Dangarembga joined the university drama club, and wrote and directed several of the plays the group performed.

Tsitsi Dangarembga wrote it in 1985, but experienced difficulties getting it published; rejected by four Zimbabwean publishers, she eventually found a willing publisher in the London-based Women's Press.

Tsitsi Dangarembga's work is included in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

In 1989, Tsitsi Dangarembga went to Germany to study film direction at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin.

Tsitsi Dangarembga produced a number of films while in Berlin, including a documentary aired on German television.

Tsitsi Dangarembga wrote the story for the film Neria, made in 1991, which became the highest-grossing film in Zimbabwean history.

In 2000, Tsitsi Dangarembga moved back to Zimbabwe with her family, and continued her work with Nyerai Films.

Tsitsi Dangarembga is the executive director of the organization Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe and the founding director of the International Images Film Festival for Women of Harare.

Tsitsi Dangarembga is a founding member of the Institute for Creative Arts for Progress for Creative Arts in Africa.

Tsitsi Dangarembga became involved in politics, and in 2010 was named education secretary of the Movement for Democratic Change political party led by Arthur Mutambara.

Tsitsi Dangarembga cited her background coming from a family of educators, her brief stint as a teacher, and her "practical, if not formal," involvement in the education sector as preparing her for the role.

Tsitsi Dangarembga completed doctoral studies in African studies at Humboldt University of Berlin, and wrote her PhD thesis on the reception of African film.

Tsitsi Dangarembga was a judge for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature.

In 2019, Tsitsi Dangarembga was announced as a finalist for the St Francis College Literary Prize, a biennial award recognizing outstanding fiction by writers in the middle stages of their careers, which was eventually won that year by Samantha Hunt.

On 31 July 2020 Tsitsi Dangarembga was arrested in Harare, Zimbabwe, ahead of anti-corruption protests.

In September 2020, Tsitsi Dangarembga was announced as the University of East Anglia's inaugural International Chair of Creative Writing, from 2021 to 2022.

Tsitsi Dangarembga won the 2021 PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression, given annually since 2005 to honour writers who continue working despite being persecuted for their writing.

In June 2021, it was announced that Tsitsi Dangarembga would be the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Peace Prize awarded by the German book publishers and booksellers association, making her the first black woman to be honoured with the award since it was inaugurated in 1950.

In 2022, Tsitsi Dangarembga was selected to receive a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction.

Tsitsi Dangarembga was prosecuted for incitement to public violence and violation of anti-Covid rules after an anti-government demonstration organized at the end of July 2020.

Tsitsi Dangarembga was given a $110 fine and a suspended six-month jail sentence.

On 8 May 2023, it was announced that Tsitsi Dangarembga's conviction had been overturned after she appealed the initial conviction in 2022.