Reading by Petina Gappah, author of Out of Darkness, Shining Light

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. Her short story collection An Elegy for Easterly (2009) won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009. It has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, Japanese, Norwegian, Serbian, and Swedish. Her first novel, The Book of Memory (2015), is the fictional testament of an imprisoned albino woman on death row, who is hoping for a presidential reprieve. It was awarded the McKitterick Prize from the Society of Authors in 2015 and shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger. Her second collection of stories, Rotten Row (2016) was chosen as a “Book of the Day” by The Guardian. Her 2019 novel, Out of Darkness, Shining Light was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2020. She has also written for such outlets as The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.