Zodwa Nyoni

Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born poet and playwright.

Zodwa Nyoni
Born
Zimbabwe
NationalityZimbabwean
OccupationPlaywright

Early life and education

Nyoni was born around 1988 and she first moved to England in 1992,[1] when she was aged four, because her father was awarded a scholarship to study for a master's degree in the textiles industry.[2] After three years, the family returned to Zimbabwe. After a further three years, in 1999, the family returned to Leeds.[2] At school in Leeds, Nyoni remembers pupils asking her sisters if they had lions and elephants in their garden in Zimbabwe; in Zimbabwe, they were referred to as 'the English girls'.[3] Zodwa's father teaches at a university in Zimbabwe. She is one of seven children, five of them living in Leeds, with two half siblings in Botswana.[2]

She was educated at Roundhay School,[2] Leeds City College, Leeds Beckett University and the University of Leeds.[4]

Career

Her first play Boi Boi is Dead was first performed at the Leeds Playhouse in 2014. It was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.[5] To prepare the play, Nyoni was awarded a 2013 Channel 4 Playwrights Award.[6] Ode to Leeds was first performed at the Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and was reviewed with three stars by The Guardian.[7] Poetry features throughout the play, as it follows the lives of young spoken word performers from Leeds.[8] Nyoni's 2014 play, Nine Lives, was featured in a 2018 article on the migrant condition in British theatre.[9] Early career awards include: Award for the Arts 2011 (Leeds Black Awards); Young Black and Asian Writers Award (The Big Issue in the North's Short Story Competition 2011;[10] Ilkley Literature Festival (ILF)'s Apprentice Poet in Residence.[11] Nyoni's next play is due to be staged at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 2020.[12] Experience of life in African diaspora is central to Nyoni's creativity.[13] A recent work, debuted at Summerhall in 2019, was A Khoisan Woman - a play about the Hottentot Venus.[14]

Selected works
  • Ode To Leeds (Methuen Drama, 2017)[15]
  • Nine Lives (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015)[16]
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References
  1. Love, Catherine (25 May 2017). "We are Leeds: slam poet Zodwa Nyoni's shout-out to Yorkshire's young voices". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
  2. "UK-based Zimbabwean playwright Zodwa Nyoni". New Zimbabwe. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
  3. "An interview with Zodwa Nyoni". Literary Sisters. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
  4. "Zodwa Nyoni Alumna". University of Leeds. 18 September 2017.
  5. "Finalist 2014-15". Blackburn Prize.
  6. "Winners Announced Channel 4 Playwrights Scheme". Channel 4.
  7. Brennan, Clare (18 June 2017). "Ode to Leeds Review: Poetry in the City". The Guardian.
  8. Youngs, Ian (14 June 2017). "Zodwa Nyoni: The writer making young people seen and heard". BBC News.
  9. Cornford, Tom (27 April 2018). "Experiencing Nationlessness: Staging the Migrant Condition in Some Recent British Theatre" (PDF). Journal of Contemporary Drama in English. 6 (1): 101–112. doi:10.1515/jcde-2018-0014.
  10. "Zodwa Nyoni". Bloomsbury.
  11. "Poets in Residence". Ilkley Literature Festival.
  12. "Royal Exchange Theatre Autumn Winter 2019 2020 Season Announced". Royal Exchange.
  13. Folarin, Inaya (20 December 2017). "Creating to Survive". The Gryphon.
  14. "A Khoisan Woman". Summerhall. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
  15. Nyoni, Zodwa (2017). Ode to Leeds. Methuen Drama. ISBN 9781350045880.
  16. Nyoni, Zodwa (2015). Nine Lives. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781474274401.
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