Bio
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean sarungano. Her debut short story collection Drinking from Graveyard Wells (University Press of Kentucky) won the Cornell University 2023 Philip Freund Prize for Creative Writing, and was shortlisted for the Ursula Le Guin Prize for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Collection.
Her novel manuscript-in-progress was selected by George R.R. Martin for the Worldbuilder Scholarship. She earned her BA at Cornell University and her MFA at UMass Amherst. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Tin House Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute.
She is the Newhouse Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Wellesley College and has taught at UMass Amherst, Clarion West online, and the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. She is the co-founder of the Voodoonauts Summer Fellowship for Black SFF writers.
Her work has been anthologized in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021 and the NAACP-award nominated Africa Risen (Tor). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Journal, F&SF, Tor.com, Lightspeed, FANTASY Magazine, and Fiyah Literary Magazine for Black Speculative Fiction. She is currently at work on a novel.
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Sign-up for my newsletter, Letters from a Sarungano:
https://yvettelisandlovu.substack.com/
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Books & Writings
Other Works
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"The Friendship Bench" in Tor.com
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"Red Cloth, White Giraffe" in Fiyah Literary Magazine (Issue 15)
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"Plumtree" in Columbia Journal
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In The Press
"Ndlovu draws on southern African traditions, and the results are endlessly thrilling.... Ndlovu has a gift for clever conceits and knife-twist endings."
Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post