Dr Drew Shaw in roundtable discussion with Bulawayo authors John Eppel, Bryony Rheam, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu and Violette Kee-tui.
About the authors in this roundtable discussion:
John Eppel is a veteran poet, novelist and short story writer, also well known as an English teacher of over 50 years. An MA graduate of KwaZulu Natal University, his first novel DGG Berry’s the Great North Road won the M-Net Prize in 1993. His poetry collection Spoils of War won the Ingrid Jonker prize and Landlocked: New and Selected Poems from Zimbabwe won the Poetry Workshop Prize judged by Billy Collins. He has published 23 books and other novels include Hatchings, Absent the English Teacher, Traffickings and The Boy Who Loved Camping.
Bryony Rheam has published short stories in many anthologies and her first novel This September Sun topped the UK Amazon chart, also being chosen as Best First Book by at the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association Awards. It was then selected as an A level Literature set book in Zimbabwe, which is an honour. An MA graduate of Kent University, Bryony Rheam was the recipient of a Morland Scholarship in 2018 and published her second book, a detective novel titled All Come to Dust, in 2020, which won a NAMA award. She attended Girls College and has taught English at Girls College where she is now Deputy Head.
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is also a Girls College alumnus and attended at the same time that John Eppel was a teacher there. She later moved to the USA, where she obtained a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. However, she returns often to her hometown, fictionalised as The City of Kings in her first two novels, The Theory of Flight and The History of Man. The former won the prestigious Barry Ronge Sunday Times Fiction Award in South Africa in 2019, and the latter was shortlisted. Like Bryony Rheam, she was a recipient of a Morland Scholarship, and she continues to write prolifically.
Violette Kee-Tui also grew up in Bulawayo and wrote for the Chronicle for many years, where she became Assistant Features Editor. She won Feature Writer of the Year Award in the National Journalism Awards, and won the Intwasa Short Story Competition. Her first novel, Mulberry Dreams, is set and centred in Bulawayo’s diverse and distinctive coloured community. It has proved popular and Violette is working on a second novel which is a sequel. She taught English at Christian Brothers College, for a time and is now a proprietor of the Orange Elephant with her partner Paul Hubbard.