Yvonne Vera (1964-2005) was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and later attended York University in Toronto, gaining her doctorate in English Literature in 1995. Her fiction has won a number of international awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN (2004) and the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa (2002). Her novel Nehanda was short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize (Africa, 1995), which she won two years later for Under the Tongue (1997).