A Family Portrait is the ambitious product of a ten-day workshop, Breaking the Silence Project, which held in 2012 in Harare, organised by the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA) Trust and funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. There are seven fictional stories centred around the theme of violence in A Family Portrait. The stories are based on sixty true-life stories that were submitted to the workshop as letters from the public. The stories of the anthology were written by established and emerging Zimbabwean writers, who were contributors at the workshop, including Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ignatius Mabasa, Yandani Mlilo, Elizabeth Muchemwa, Charmaine Mujeri and Karen Mukwasi. There is also an introduction to the book by the Canadian Madeleine Thien. This is a book of violence; it forces the reader to confront the human capacity for violence."