Spotted around the web: short stories, novels and debate.

Bakwa magazine:

Why does the West ignore intellectual property when Africa is concerned? What does the New York Times really know about music in Africa? Can hip-hop save an artist’s life?, Fashion: from Kumba to New York, Is music alternative literature?, Does ‘Don 4 Kwat’ start a new chapter in hip-hop? RIP Chinua Achebe.

Plus: fiction by Chinedu Achebe, poetry by Jumoke Verissimo, and Syl Cheney-Coker, and photography by Serubiri Moses.

Kinna Reads published a robust critique of the twitterati and their rehashing of debates around African literature. I’m hoping the debates about women’s place as writers will continue here:

To younger African women writers: Writing is good parenting, writing is not selfish. The children, familial obligations will all be fine.  I am daughter of an African woman writer and I’ve watched my mother struggle with demands of motherhood, sisterhood, all sorts of ‘hoods’.  To younger African woman writers: you cannot re-create time. Books won’t write themselves as you try to balance demands on your time.

Graphic novel news from Nigeria:

On the 12th of June 1993, a presidential election, adjudged free and fair by an overwhelming majority of observers, took place in Nigeria. A few days after, its results were suspended; and barely a week later, Nigerians were given a new word to add to their vocabulary: ‘annulment’. What really happened in those tumultuous days between June and November 1993? For the first time  , the full story, with its intricacies, intrigue and complexities, is told from the perspectives of all its major players, in this full-colour graphic novel

Reading list: books released by African authors in 2013

As blogs gear up for the Caine Prize ‘Blog-Carnival’, some short story links…

Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2013 The stories are being published in Granta, beginning this week (Canadian story first).

Short Story Day Africa:

… brings together writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, teachers and school children from all over the globe to write, submit, read, workshop and discuss stories, and foster the love of reading and African fiction. Because we have something to tell the world. In our own voices. About us.

Find out how you can support the project (and get hold of an e copy of the proposed anthology) here, or follow them on Twitter:@ShortStoryAFR

NoViolet Bulawayo writes in Blak Power:

You can tell from the guard’s face that he is getting frustrated, that if he could land his hands, his stick, on Bastard right now, he would do him bad.

I will catch you and you will wish you were never born, you pathetic, fatally miscalculated biological blunder, he says, his mouth all quivering. Then he turns to us like he has just remembered we are there. Go, get away from here at once. Is this what they teach you at school, huh? To behave like animals? Move, depart! he says.

Ah, we don’t go to school anymore. The teachers left, don’t you even know what is happening? Godknows says. The guard starts saying something but then just stands there like all his big words are gone.

Looking back to the role of writers in the anti-apartheid movement, yet topical for its discussion of freedom of speech as much as challenging fundamentalism,  the Guardian (UK) demonstrates its continuing strong links with the SA press in  ‘Clash of the Booker Titans‘

Coetzee had kept his hands clean in a dirty situation, Gordimer had been prepared to grubby herself in the messy world of struggle politics.

And if you need a soundtrack for your surfing, this one created by DJ Edu to mark 50 years since the birth of the OAU might do.

Categories: Reviews & Spotlights on...

Tags: african, announcement, apartheid, boycott, Caine Prize, Coetzee, launch, link, literature, mix, Music, Nigeria, OAU, Review, short story, South Africa, Zimbabwe