MEET THE WRITER

PHILLIP KUNDENI CHIDAVAENZI

Phillip Kundeni Chidavaenzi has practiced as a journalist in Harare, Zimbabwe, for the past 14 years and currently works as Features & Lifestyle Editor at a leading Zimbabwean daily, NewsDay. After graduating from the Christian College of Southern Africa (CCOSA) with a Diploma in Communication and Journalism. He started off his career in the media as an intern at the State-owned newspaper, The Sunday Mail in 2002. Upon completion of his internship, he moved to the privately owned Zimbabwe Mirror Group of Newspapers. He rose through the ranks over the next few years to become the Features Editor for the Sunday Mirror between June 2004 and May 2005.

He left the media briefly after the closure of the company and worked for a few organisations, including the Just Children Foundation as an information officer between 2006 and July 2010. On August 1, 2010 he bounced back into the media, joining the newly established NewsDay as a Senior Features Writer.

In 2005, Chidavaenzi was part of a group of young Zimbabwean writers mentored through Crossing Borders, a distance learning programme offered by Lancaster University in the United Kingdom in partnership with the British Council in Zimbabwe.

His first secular novel, The Haunted Trail, was published by Longman (Zimbabwe) in 2006 and won him a National Merit Award (Outstanding First Published Creative Work) in 2007. The book subsequently won Longman Zimbabwe the second prize in the Zimbabwe National Publishers Association Awards. He then published The Ties that Bind, (2015).

Chidavaenzi, who holds a post-graduate Diploma in Christian Ministry and Leadership from Transform Your World Leadership Institute (Harare, Zimbabwe), has also written The Gospel of Grace: From the Old to the New Testament (2016). He lives in Harare with his wife and daughter.

During early childhood, Chidavaenzi has always had creative leanings as he was passionate about Art while at primary school. His other passion was reading, fed by the multitudes of books that were part of the household. It was during that time that he extensively read western books such as the series of the cowboys in the wild, Wild West and the pirates at sea. During his years at Sinioia Primary School in the small farming town of Chinhoyi, he was introduced to a system that built a strong read culture which he still boasts of to this day.  

It was only in high school at St Albert’s High School in Centenary, Mashonaland East, that he developed an interest in writing, starting off with short stories that were more like an extension of the English compositions in class.  Back then he did it as a pleasure activity. But long after he had left school he kept at it. It became serious. This marked the beginning of serious writing when, from the time he was in college, his short stories started appearing in magazines such as Parade and Moto.