Graduate Teaching Assistant

office: 1 Tate
phone: 573-882-0681
email: lgm7rf@mizzou.edu
office hours: T 12:30-1:30,
R 9:30-10:30

Research and teaching areas:
Creative Writing - Fiction;
Africana Literature and Africana
Feminisms

Lily Mabura

Lily Mabura received her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Idaho and is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing (Fiction) and Africana Literature at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her dissertation project includes a novel titled House on a Jade Sea, an excerpt of which is forthcoming in Stand Magazine, UK. Field research for this novel was carried out in the Northern Kenya regions of Chalbi Desert and Lake Turkana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, courtesy of funding from the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Fund, Utah, the John D. Bies International Travel Scholarship from the UMC Graduate School, the UMC Center for the Literary Arts, and the UMC Department of English. As the 2008-09 Visiting Pre-Doctoral Dissertation Fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, University of Rochester, New York, she also worked on the scholarly part of her dissertation, which is titled Representations of the Violently Displaced Black Female Self in Contemporary African Literature. This scholarly project includes the essay "Breaking Gods: An African Postcolonial Gothic Reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun," which has appeared in Research in African Literatures (Spring 2008), and "Black Women Walking Zimbabwe: Refuge and Prospect in the Landscapes of Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and its Sequel, The Book of Not," which is forthcoming in a special issue of the same journal. She has received International Fellowships from AAUW and P.E.O International. Her literary awards include the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and Kenya’s National Book Week Literary Award. Lily’s short stories have appeared in literary journals such as PRISM international, Wasafiri, Callaloo, and the 2007 Fish Anthology. Other publications include a novel, The Pretoria Conspiracy, and three children's books: Saleh Kanta and the Cavaliers, Seth the Silly Gorilla, and Ali the Little Sultan.

Education
PhD, Creative Writing (Fiction) and Africana Literature, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA (In-progress: PhD Candidate - ABD)
MFA, Creative Writing – Fiction, University of Idaho - ID, USA (2004)
BS, University of Nairobi - Kenya (1999)

Selected Publications

• Mabura, Lily. “A Conversation with Bret Lott.” Forthcoming in Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Center for the Literary Arts - Univ. of Missouri-Columbia.
• Mabura, Lily. Finding Anam Ka'alakol: A Jade Sea of Many Fish (novel excerpt). Forthcoming in Stand Magazine (School of English at University of Leeds, UK, and the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA)

Courses Taught

• English 1000: Exposition and Argument - War Literature Theme
• English 1310: Introduction to American Literature
• English 1510: Introduction to Fiction
• English 2510: Intermediate Fiction

address: 107 Tate Hall, Columbia, MO 65211-1500
phone: 573.882.6421 | fax: 573.882.5785 | department email: umcenglish@missouri.edu

website email: englishweb@missouri.edu
maintained by Sarah Zurhellen

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