An Edinburgh International Book Festival session with Damon Galgut: Arctic Summer (Umuzi/Atlantic, 2014). Part of the Book Festival’s ‘Voices from South Africa’ theme. Chaired by Claire Armitstead (Books Editor at the Guardian and the Observer). Arctic Summer is South African writer… Read More ›
Hot on the heels of Okwiri Oduor’s Caine Prize win for ‘My Father’s Head’, published through Short Story Day Africa, SSDA announced the long list of eighteen stories that will make up their 2014 anthology, Terra Incognita, in August, and now,… Read More ›
AiW guest: James Smith. Broken Monsters and Broken Dreams I read Broken Monsters on a night flight from Cape Town, on my way to interview Lauren Beukes following her contribution to the Edinburgh Book Festival (2014 edition). It made the… Read More ›
Africa in Words is very excited to be back at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year, “the world’s largest public celebration of the written word, right in the heart of Edinburgh”. Tickets for all events are available now from the… Read More ›
NEWS (no longer quite breaking): A. Gofer (c/o Steph Newell) has won the inaugural International Aubrey Tearle Proofreader’s Derby (fittingly restlessly re-named from the 2014 Restless Derby). The neck-and-neck runners up are Catharine Morris aka Words and Things, and Kai… 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 ›
Walking into Vroman’s—an independent bookstore in Pasadena, California, a place I’ve been coming since I was a kid—I was shocked to see Sarah Lotz’s name written neatly in red marker on the whiteboard announcing author talks. I’d just come back… Read More ›
| REGISTER for the 2014 Restless Derby | Judged by The Restless Supermarket author Ivan Vladislavić. The winner is to be announced at a celebratory awards ceremony at the University of Sussex on Monday 23rd June, from 3.30pm. Vladislavić, recognised as… 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 ›
Some fiction news from South Africa in these last few weeks – the shorts: Twenty in 20 – a call for your bests of the South African short story since 1994 | the Sunday Times Lifestyle Magazine (27th… Read More ›
Africa in Words Guest: Lucy McCann. For the 20th anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa on the 27th April a website has been launched recording the history of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain. Funded by the Amiel &… Read More ›
By AiW Guest: An anonymous academic labourer, somewhere in the South-East of England. Recently I helped teach a course on South African protest and resistance literature. We looked at fiction and poetry from the late 1970s to the late 80s,… Read More ›
Book reading and discussion with KGEBETLI MOELE AND RACHEL ZADOK 11TH FEBRUARY 2014, 19H00 GOETHE-INSTITUT, LIBRARY Children are not only young people developing but subjects in their own right. This premise is the starting point to discuss social constructions of… 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 ›
These are extremely interesting times for travel writing as a genre; a number of online- and print-based travel projects have been sprung up over recent years, all focusing on Africans travelling within Africa – some within their own countries, and… Read More ›
Teju Cole introducing Ivan Vladislavic in Chelsea: “One of the best writers in the world… one of the great modern prose stylists.” Agreed. — Africa is a Country (@AfricasaCountry) November 5, 2013 (Tweeted from 192 Books in New York, where Teju Cole, author… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Graham Riach. The first edition of new literary magazine Prufrock, which appeared in autumn this year, cuts quite a dash. The cover must be somewhere around a Pantone 2635c, I imagine, with a line drawing of J. Alfred’s… Read More ›
AiW Guest Christine Singer. The widely anticipated film Of Good Report opened Film Africa 2013, London’s annual major celebration of film from Africa and the diaspora, on 1 November 2013 at the Hackney Picturehouse. Set in a small town in… Read More ›
We’ve had a busy twelve months at AiW, one full of firsts – such as our linked ‘Series’ posts featuring Guest contributors, and the beginnings of our Q&As. The blog has now been running for two years, and we’ve gained new followers… 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 ›
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