Promoting the people’s resilience and creativity

ents to the theme to show the power that lies in Africa, its possibilities and opportunities.
Pamberi’s goal in participating in the programme is to promote Zimbabwe, it’s people, their survival, resilience, humour, creativity and ingenuity.
The first of a mini-series “What is Literature?” takes place at the Book Café at 5.30pm this evening with Petina Gappah, a well-known Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from the University of Zimbabwe, Graz University in Austria and the University of Cambridge.
Her short fiction has been published in literary journals and anthologies in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, and is forthcoming in an anthology by OV Books of Chicago.
In 2007, she came second in a Southern Africa-wide short story contest organised by the South Africa Centre of International PEN and judged by JM Coetzee. She lives in Geneva, Switzerland, with her son Kush, where she works as a lawyer for the ACWL, an organisation that advises developing countries on WTO law. She is currently completing her first novel and researching for a biography of Zimbabwean musicians the Bhundu Boys.
Literary evenings have been a regular feature at The Book Café for some years, and are welcomed in Harare as a much-needed platform for literature and an opportunity for literary people to get together. The literary discussion programme is currently supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, established in 1930 “to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations”. – Penny Yon