I’ve recently picked up Tim Parks’ collection of essays Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books (2014). One of the essays in Part 2, ‘The Book In the World’, entitled ‘Writing Adrift in the World’, critiques post-colonial literary… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Jeanne-Marie Jackson South Africa’s literary world, as part of the country’s broad current turmoil, offers evidence for more than just a shallow reading of cultural déjà vu. This evidence goes by the name of Salman Rushdie, who unexpectedly… Read More ›
Few days left to catch the GRID Cape Town Biennial: 14 Feb – 15 March 2015: GRID is an international photography biennial which is to be organized in several important upcoming creative cities in the world. GRID brings together formal… Read More ›
AiW Guest Zukiswa Wanner Arrivals I receive my invitation to Open Book in March 2014. Just the way I like it. It’s a good six months before the Festival and I can mark my calendar accordingly. My itinerary, tickets and… Read More ›
A story about waste – human waste – in immaculate prose, Diane Awerbuck’s ‘Phosphorescence’ has, for me, a quality of suspension. On the one hand, it’s about the defiant resistance of ‘an old lady’ against loss, of her habitual daily… Read More ›
South African Book Fair, 13-15th June 2014 Cape Town International Convention Centre, 09.00-18.00 daily The final countdown to the 2014 South African Book Fair has begun! The annual South African Book Fair kicks off at the Cape Town International Convention Centre… Read More ›
Africa in Words will be taking a short break from posting new content over the Christmas period, but we will be back refreshed and raring to go in January. Meanwhile, so you can still get your Africa in Words fix,… Read More ›
Writivism CONNECTING LITERATURE TO REALITY. Writivism 2014 Creative Writing Workshops. The Writivism 2014 workshops will be held on the 8th of February 2014, simultaneously in five different African cities. The one-day workshops are planned for Abuja, Harare, Kampala, Nairobi and Cape… Read More ›
Issue Three: A Tall Glass of Water, Summer 2013 Deadline for completed submissions: Monday, November 11th Prufrock and Fox & Raven are joining forces to publish the best of short genre fiction in South Africa. Submit your original story of up… Read More ›
AiW Guest Tom Penfold. Imraan Coovadia’s The Institute of Taxi Poetry (Umuzi, 2012) is an appeal to the imagination – the reader’s and South Africa’s. Set through a week in the life of Adam Ravens as he tries to make sense of… Read More ›
Henrietta Rose-Innes is an award-winning South African writer based in Cape Town. I was lucky enough to be able to catch her at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in advance of her session, ‘New Voices from South Africa’, which is on the… Read More ›
I came across a meme recently “You know you’re a bookaholic when…” One was “when the first thing you look at in a friend’s house is the bookshelves”. I identified. I house sat for another Africa in Words writer recently,… Read More ›
Chatting to Nancy Richards about AiW on SAfm’s Word of Mouth feature, part of the Literature show, on Sunday (03/03), I was struck once again by the significance of the generative potential of literary and intellectual networks across the continent,… Read More ›
AiW Guest Stephanie Bosch Santana. The cover of Jungle Jim issue no. 16, the magazine’s “South African Sci-fi” edition, depicts Zulu warriors casting tiny, toothpick-like spears at the Goliath of an alien bearing down on them. Styled after the pulp magazines… Read More ›
AiW Guest Graham Riach. On the front cover of issue 16 of Jungle Jim,a starry sky hangs low over two Zulu tribesmen, assegais held high behind their shields. Looming towards them is a muscle-bound giant with an insectoid robotic head,… Read More ›
AiW Guest Ed Charlton. As an intervention into the formal space of South African print culture, Jungle Jim is certainly daring and distinctive. If not an entirely unique mode of literary production, its pulp ’zine format is, nonetheless, a marked… Read More ›
(Part 2 of this interview is here…) Genre fiction and the rise of African sci-fi; the establishment of literary networks across the continent; the status of independent publishing and bookselling, as well as the significance of DIY ethics and aesthetics in… Read More ›
Quick update on the previous posts about the Open Book Festival, Cape Town, hosting the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference with 3 events – Censorship Today – a keynote by author Keith Gray, chaired by Mervyn Sloman, the Director of Open… Read More ›
Further to the previous post, other events joining ‘Censorship Today’ as part of the World Writers’ Conference at Open Book, Cape Town: Excited to see that Njabulo Ndebele and Antjie Krog will be in discussion – ‘Should Literature be Political’, 20 September… Read More ›
I was at the Cape Town Book Fair back in June (June 15-17, 2012). I approached a range of publishers and booksellers exhibiting and asked what was ‘new’ for them in South African fiction, and to give me their latest fiction-must-reads –… Read More ›
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