The written word envelops online as South African, African and International writers meet for a thought-provoking week of literary dialogue, exchanging ideas, and stimulating discussions. Time of the Writer features a diverse gathering of leading novelists, social commentators, activists, playwrights, short… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Lizzy Attree. Flora Veit-Wild presents this compelling book as a memoir, and it does contain some personal details of her early life in Germany which supplement and enrich the portrayal of her love affair with the Zimbabwean writer… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Kwame Osei-Poku (Ph.D.), University of Ghana. When a collection of stories succeeds in making its readers identify with and care about real issues, triggering sensations of empathy and reinforcing readers’ own reminiscences, we realise the powerful impact of… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Thulani Angoma-Mzini There is a silence, or perhaps a deafness, that the lay man (and particularly the cis-gendered heterosexual man) indulges in when it comes to bodies gendered differently to theirs. The collection of essays titled Living While… Read More ›
AiW note: This week, we bring you two reviews of Billy Kahora’s short story collection, The Cape Cod Bicycle Wars and Other Stories – originally published by Huza Press (Kigali) in 2019 and made available in the US with Ohio University Press in… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Ofonime Inyang. AiW note: This week, we bring you two reviews of Billy Kahora’s short story collection, The Cape Cod Bicycle Wars and Other Stories – originally published by Huza Press (Kigali) in 2019 and made available in the US… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi. We’ve been a fan of Akwaeke Emezi’s writing since the pre-launch of their debut, Freshwater, at Africa Writes 2018; after that luminous novel and its YA successor, Pet, Emezi is back with what is perhaps 2020’s… Read More ›
After a difficult year for everyone, the holiday time is looking harder than before. A time to normally spend with family and relaxation has become one of stress and uncertainty. However, we hope that the holidays can still be a… Read More ›
Sepuya’s portrait photography, described by the artist as ‘queer modernism’, disrupts the conventions of traditional studio portraiture, to become a site of homoerotic social relations: a space where the roles of artist and subject are constructed and contested. The book exposes Sepuya’s play with artifice and performance as it outlines the development of his visual practice, cataloguing how he uses his own body, and those of his intimate circle of friends and lovers, in ways which challenge notions of power and authorship. Deeply connected with the written word, he found in texts and literature a way to make sense of this ‘gap of language between desired object and desiring subject’ (p.14), the very gap in which his practice is located.
“The untapped knowledge on his doorstep in southern Africa was a continual source for honing his skills, and no amount of online reading and searching could replace face-to-face experiences with the people out in the dry Kalahari or the slippery… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Maëline Le Lay. Initially published by Akashic Books, the New York publisher of Kenyan novelist and journalist Peter Kimani (author of the highly regarded Dance of the Jakaranda), this collection of short stories complements the rich collection of “noir”… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Tikondwe Kaphagawani Chimkowola. Romeo Oriogun’s Sacrament of Bodies (2020) opens with a quote from Kazim Ali that mourns, “in one place everyone looks like me – has my name – I am the most foreign”. This longing for… Read More ›
AiW note: Posts over 5 days this week, have introduced the epic endeavour of the Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry being made by the Keiskamma Art Project in the rural hamlet of Hamburg, South Africa, through the place, the people –… Read More ›
AiW note: This week, we have been following and introducing the stories behind the Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry, an epic, ambitious response to the pandemic made by the Keiskamma Art Project in the rural hamlet of Hamburg, South Africa. As… Read More ›
AiW note: Yesterday, as part of our Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry series, we introduced four artists from Keiskamma, leading on from Monday’s introduction to the work, which is currently underway. Today, in the second of our “meetings” posts with the… Read More ›
AiW note: Our posts, running over 5 days this week, introduce the Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry through the place, the people – its makers – and their history. The ambitious tapestry, responding to the pandemic, is being made by the… Read More ›
AiW note: The Keiskamma Art Project, in the rural hamlet of Hamburg, South Africa, is embarking on an ambitious tapestry in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The next five posts will introduce the Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry through the place,… Read More ›
In 2019, Mangaliso Buzani’s A Naked Bone won the African Poetry Book Fund’s Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. In a subsequent interview published in Africa in Dialogue, Buzani recalls how, upon hearing the news, he quicky phoned fellow poet and New Brighton resident, Mxolisi Nyezwa. This phone call is one that is particularly apt because when you read A Naked Bone there is, hidden within Buzani’s remarkable and dreamlike poetry, a touch of Nyezwa. There is a fragile sort of beauty that poignantly captures a deeply personal suffering.
AiW Guest: Thulani Angoma-Mzini. In The Border Jumper (2019), Christopher Mlalazi upends the “Jim comes to Joburg” trope about the trafficking of rural dreams in a big city. Mlalazi has created a grimy, high-speed chase, shoot-‘em-up style novel written with… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Joseph Oduro-Frimpong. AiW note: With his review of Wole Soyinka’s book, Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and Dissonance in African Art Traditions – “an intimate reflection on culture and tradition, creativity and power, that draws on a lifetime’s commitment to… Read More ›
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