Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, a University of Houston alumna who received her Ph.D. in creative writing and literature, has won the prestigious 2020 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction.

Bestowed by the Lannan Foundation since 1989, the Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships recognizing writers who have made significant contributions to English-language literature. These fellowships provide time and support for writers to continue or complete specific projects, while also recognizing those who show potential for future outstanding work. Candidates are suggested anonymously "by a network of writers, literary scholars, publishers and editors," with the foundation's literary committee making the final determination.

Tshuma, who was born and grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is the author of the novel “House of Stone,” winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place and the 2019 Bulawayo Arts Award for Outstanding Fiction. The novel was also listed for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize, the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize and the 2020 Balcones Fiction Prize. Tshuma has been invited to give public lectures about “House of Stone” at Oxford University, Vassar College and the Nordic Africa Institute. In 2017, she received the Rockefeller Foundation’s prestigious Bellagio Center Literary Arts Residency Award.

Tshuma is an assistant professor of fiction at Emerson College in Boston, Mass., where she serves on the Writing, Literature and Publishing Faculty. She has been recognized as one of the most promising writers from Africa under the age of 40.