NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names, was recognized with the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Pen/Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the International Literature Award. She has taught fiction writing at Cornell and Stanford Universities, and is currently writing full-time from the wherevers. Her second novel, Glory, is forthcoming in March 2022.

Mukoma Wa Ngugi is Associate Professor of Literatures in English at Cornell University and the author of The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity and Ownership, the novels Mrs. Shaw, Black Star Nairobi, Nairobi Heat, and two books of poetry, Logotherapy and Hurling Words at Consciousness. Unbury Our Dead With Song, a novel about competing Tizita musicians, was released from Cassava Republic Press in May of 2021. His latest novel, Unbury Our Dead With Song is coming out in August 2021.

NoViolet Bulawayo and Mukoma wa Ngugi in Conversation