In 2011, NoViolet Bulawayo was an aspiring writer fresh out of Cornell's Creative Writing Program when one recognition changed her life. Her story "Hitting Budapest," written while she was at Cornell and published in the Boston Review in 2010, won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing and launched her literary career.
Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo, M.F.A. '10, speaks at Cornell in 2012.
The story, set in Zimbabwe, has had lasting power: In September, Bulawayo, M.F.A. '10, assistant professor of literatures in English in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), won the Best of Caine Award when judges chose it as the best to have won the Caine Prize for African Writing in the award's 25 years.
"The Caine Prize for African Writing marks 25 years of honoring outstanding African writers who go on to make a profound impact on the literary world," the prize committee said. Since its inception in 2000, the prize has recognized more than 120 authors through its annual award and each year's short list. In honor of this milestone year, the Best of Caine Award replaced the traditional annual prize cycle.
"I'm deeply delighted that the best story in the prize's 25-year history was written on an ordinary day by a student who stayed behind after workshop to write the first draft in the Epoch Magazine office in Goldwin Smith Hall," Bulawayo said. "I remember the revising and editing afterwards, and later, placing the story in the Boston Review. I'm humbled by the story's journey and supremely honored by this second recognition."
"Hitting Budapest" follows a group of six Zimbabwean children who sneak from their shantytown into an affluent neighborhood, Budapest, to steal guavas.
Bulawayo entered Cornell's Master of Fine Arts program with a determination to write about her native Zimbabwe at a time of upheaval there, said Helena María Viramontes, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in English (A&S). Through hard work in the M.F.A. program, Bulawayo began to shape the copious material.
"I tell my students to concentrate on the characters, and the backdrop will fall into place," said Viramontes, who was Bulawayo's M.F.A. thesis committee chair. "I think 'Hitting Budapest' is a perfect example of that."
Bulawayo credits her Cornell classmates and teachers with insight and guidance for revising this story, and with training her to produce "compelling work of publishable quality." Upon receiving the award, Bulawayo said winning the Caine prize in 2011 jumpstarted her career as an author, bringing her work to a global audience, and strengthened her confidence and commitment to writing.
She began her first novel, "We Need New Names," while a Cornell M.F.A. student. The novel expands on "Hitting Budapest" and was published in 2013, winning a Betty Trask Award, a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, among others. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Bulawayo's second novel, "Glory," was published in 2022.
Now a creative writing faculty member at Cornell, Bulawayo shares with her students her experience with writing, publication and recognition, telling them that it all starts with the hard work of showing up to write - the way she stayed late after class to start the story that affirmed her literary path.
"In the end, it's steady commitment to the craft that matters," she said. "It's an honor to be working with the next generation of writers at such a formative stage in their lives."
Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
