Yvonne Vera, “one of Zimbabwe’s best known writers,” has died at age 40 of meningitis. As a Guardian obituary by Helon Habila notes, Vera was a writer “for whom the world was just beginning to open up. In the last three years, she had won a string of international awards, including the Tucholski prize awarded by Swedish PEN (2004) and the Macmillan writer’s prize for Africa, for The Stone Virgins in 2002. She was also the 1997 winner of the Commonwealth writer’s prize for best novel, Africa region, for Under The Tongue.” Habila notes that “Vera left Zimbabwe last year to join her Canadian husband, John Jose, in Toronto. She had held on in her homeland as long as she could before joining the considerable list of Zimbabwean intelligentsia fleeing the unacceptable political climate in their country.” Vera once said: “I would love to be remembered as a writer who had no fear for words and who had an intense love for her nation.”