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Zimbabwean-American author NoViolet Bulawayo is visiting Melbourne to speak about her critically acclaimed, breathtaking first novel We Need New Names. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the book follows the life of ten-year-old Darling, in Bulawayo’s native Zimbabwe, and Darling’s subsequent migration to the United States as a teenager. We’re sitting on stage together, on a panel at the Melbourne Writers Festival titled ‘Writing Voice’. I’m here by virtue of my debut book of fiction, the African diaspora short-story collection Foreign Soil.