Novelist, playwright, cultural activist and prize-winning filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga studied psychology at the University of Zimbabwe. She obtained her MA in Directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She is known for her trilogy of novels set in her home country, comprising Nervous Conditions (1988), The Book of Not (2006), and the 2020 Booker Prize nominated This mournable body (2018), as well as for her collection of essays Black and Female (2022). Selected literary awards includes English Pen’s Pinter Prize (2021), The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2021), Yale University’s Windham Campbell Prize (2022) and the Pen Catalan Free Voice Award (2023).

Amongst other prestigious residencies, Dangarembga is a former fellow of the Rockefeller Bellagio Centre (2016) and the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (2022-23). She was the 2021-22 International Chair in Creative Writing (Africa) at the University of East Anglia, organising literary training and production events in five African countries, with an output of three publications. She has taught and spoken at leading African, European and American universities.

In 2009 Dangarembga founded the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA) Trust in Harare, Zimbabwe. The NGO diverse programme of activities includes an international women’s film festival. ICAPA is currently fundraising for a six year pan-African Film development initiative, the Creative Africa Storytelling for the Screen Incubator (CASSI). CASSI’s goal is creation of a critical mass of globally competitive film practitioners in Africa, in order to boost Africa’s earnings and ownership in the growing global film economy.

At HIAS, Dangarembga is developing a slate of long fiction films with Gabriele Sindler of DFK Films, who is also in the board of the Scriptwriters Association Germany. Dangarembga is also completing her next book, SAI-SAI, WATER STAR, a post-apocalyptic, dystopian fiction at HIAS.

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s HIAS fellowship is funded by ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS as well as by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by Universität Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.