Tsitsi Dangarembga

Curriculum Vitae

Writer, filmmaker, teacher and cultural activist, Tsitsi Dangarembga lives in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she directs the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa Trust, which she founded in 2009. She is currently working on several projects with Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe, where she is a director, that addresses the representation of women in the media. As Director of ICAPA, Tsitsi is founding a multidisciplinary film and arts teaching institution in Harare that will serve the Southern African Region, as well as a Zimbabwean film fund that will serve as a model for other countries in the region.  She is further occupied with several other projects designed to create a sustainable and creative economy in Zimbabwe.

Dangarembga was "Writer in Residence" at Northwestern University, spring 2013 and was an inaugural Fellow of the "Programme for African Leadership" of the London School of Economics in 2012. She was the McMillan-Stewart Fellow Guest lecturer at the Du Bois Institute, Harvard University in 2011. She received an Honorary MA Degree from the Women’s University in Africa in 2010, the "National Arts Council of Zimbabwe’s Arts Service Award" and "Personality of the Year Award" in 2008 and 2007 respectively.

She sat on the board of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe from 2011 to 2013, on the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe board from 2010 until 2012, as well as on the boards of the National Aids Council from 2005 to 2009 and of the Zimbabwe College of Music board from 2003 to 2009.

Her third novel "Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter" is to be published shortly.  Her second novel, "The Book of Not" , was published in 2006. Following several documentaries and credits on most of Zimbabwe's major features, including "Neria", "Flame" and "Everyone's Child", which she later co-wrote and directed. Her groundbreaking short film "Mother's Day" was released in 2004.

She chaired "Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe" from 1998 to 2005 when she made way for other incumbents.  During her tenure she founded the "International Images Film Festival for Women" in its thirteenth edition this year.  She taught African film at MIT in the Easter semester of 2001.

The first volume in the Tambudzai trilogy "Nervous Conditions" appeared to critical acclaim in 1989. 

Besides beeing a founding force behind organizations such as "Zimbabwe Association of Community Theatre", "The Women's Action Group" and "Zimbabwe Women Writers", Dangarembga has received numerous awards for her films and literature, including the "Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Africa Division" in 1989.

In addition to public speaking engagements in the USA and Europe, Tsitsi was a Guest Lecturer in the "Distinguished African Woman Programme" at Rutgers University in 1997.