Alexandra Fuller | |
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| Born | 1969 Glossop, Derbyshire, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | British Zimbabwean American |
| Notable awards | 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book 2004 Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage |
Alexandra Fuller (born 1969 [1] ) is a British-Zimbabwean author. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker , National Geographic , Granta , The New York Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times .[ citation needed ]
In 1972 Fuller moved with her family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She was educated at boarding schools in Umtali and Salisbury (renamed Harare after 1982). She met her American husband, Charlie Ross, in Zambia, where he was running a rafting business for tourists. In 1994, they moved to his home state of Wyoming. Fuller and Ross divorced in 2012. They had two daughters and one son together. [2] Their son, Fi, died in his sleep at the age of 21. [2] She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming. [3]
Her first book, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , published in 2001, is a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002. In the same year it was featured in The New York Times list of "Notable Books" and a finalist for The Guardian 's First Book Award. [4] A sequel, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness about her mother, Nicola Fuller, was published in 2011. [5]
Her 2004 book Scribbling the Cat, about war's repercussions, received the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005. [6]
In her book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant (2008) Fuller narrates the short life of a Wyoming roughneck who fell to his death at age 25 in February 2006 on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy. [7]
The autobiographical Leaving Before the Rains Come, published in January 2015, is about the disintegration of Fuller's marriage.
Fuller published her first novel, Quiet Until the Thaw, in 2017. [8]
In 2019 she published Travel Light, Move Fast about the death of her father and son.
In 2024 she published Fi: A Memoir of My Son, centres on her grief from losing her adult son. [2]
Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. [9] In 2007 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution.[ citation needed ]
The memoir follows Fuller, called Bobo by her family, and her sister and parents as they move from England to Rhodesia and other points in Central Africa. The book mainly focuses on stories of family life while moving around Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia. The Rhodesian Bush War, or Second Chimurenga, serves as a backdrop to the family's time in Rhodesia. After the Rhodesian Bush War, the Fullers move to Malawi and then Zambia.
Fuller does not hide the effect her mother's alcoholism had on her childhood and is frank about her father's casual racism. Fuller writes about living through a war, being white while growing up in an almost all-black country, and the death of siblings and beloved animals.
Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked, self-governing British Crown colony in Southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally known as South Zambesia until annexation by Britain, at the behest of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company. The bounding territories were Bechuanaland (Botswana), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Portuguese Mozambique (Mozambique) and the Transvaal Republic.
Ndabaningi Sithole was a Zimbabwean politician and statesman who was the founder of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), a militant, nationalist organisation that opposed the government of Rhodesia, in July 1963. He worked as a United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ) minister. He spent 10 years in prison after the government banned ZANU. A rift along tribal lines split ZANU in 1975, and he lost the 1980 elections to Robert Mugabe.
Embeth Jean Davidtz is an American-South African actress and director. She's appeared in movies such as Army of Darkness, Schindler's List, Matilda, Fallen,Mansfield Park, Bicentennial Man, Bridget Jones's Diary,Junebug,Fracture,The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,The Amazing Spider-Man,The Amazing Spider-Man 2,Old, and Not Okay, and in the television series In Treatment, Californication, Mad Men, Grey's Anatomy, Ray Donovan, and The Morning Show.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. She has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker 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.
The Rhodesian Bush War, also known as the Second Chimurenga, was a civil conflict from July 1964 to December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia.
Peter Godwin is a Zimbabwean author, journalist, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, and former human rights lawyer. Best known for his writings concerning the breakdown of his native Zimbabwe, he has reported from more than 60 countries and written several books. He served as president of PEN American Center from 2012 to 2015 and resides in Manhattan, New York.
White Zimbabweans, also known as White Rhodesians or simply Rhodesians, are a Southern African people of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these people of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers. A small minority are either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Afrikaners from South Africa or those descended from Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigrants.
The Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage has been given annually since 2003 for the best texts in the genre of literary reportage, which must have been first published during the previous two years. The award was initiated by Lettre International in Berlin, and is organized by the Foundation Lettre International Award, a joint partnership between Lettre International and the Aventis Foundation. The Goethe-Institut also cooperates with the project.
Rhodie is a colloquial term typically applied to a white Zimbabwean or expatriate Rhodesian.
St. Stephen's College, Balla Balla, Southern Rhodesia was a private Christian high school for boys from 1956 to 1975.
Fay King Chung is a Zimbabwean educator and was an independent candidate for the 2008 Zimbabwean senatorial election. Chung has worked to extend access to education and to bring education-with-production principles into school curricula in Zimbabwe and other developing countries.
Heidi Holland, also known as Heidi Hull, was a South African journalist and author who had been involved in the journalism industry for over 30 years. She edited Illustrated Life Rhodesia, worked as a freelance writer on publications such as The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and The Guardian, and had also worked on research projects for British television documentaries.
Alexander Gore Kanengoni was a Zimbabwean writer and veteran of the Zimbabwe War of Liberation.
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean lawyer and writer. She writes in English, though she also draws on Shona, her first language. In 2016, she was named African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle Paper. In 2017 she had a DAAD Artist-in-Residence fellowship in Berlin.
Ricardo Uceda Pérez is a Peruvian journalist notable for his award-winning coverage of military and government corruption.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir of life with Alexandra Fuller and her family on a farm in Rhodesia After the Rhodesian Bush War ended in 1980, the Fullers moved to Malawi, and then to Zambia. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a finalist for The Guardian's First Book Award, an award given to the best regional novel of the year.
Diana Mary Mitchell was a Zimbabwean political activist and writer, who was an outspoken critic of the governments of Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe.
Ruth Hartley is a British-French author and artist.
Zimbabwean literature is literature produced by authors from Zimbabwe or in the Zimbabwean Diaspora. The tradition of literature starts with a long oral tradition, was influenced heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and acts as a form of protest to the government.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a 2024 South African drama film written and directed by Embeth Davidtz in her feature directorial debut. The film is based on Alexandra Fuller's 2001 memoir about the experiences of her White Zimbabwean family following the Rhodesian Bush War. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on 30 August 2024, and was also screened as part of the Gala Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2024.
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