As the seasons change and Spring begins to arrive here in the UK, it seems a good time look forward to some forthcoming African fiction, non-fiction and poetry releases due over the next few months. What are you looking forward… Read More ›
South Africa
Future Sounds of Mzansi – Film Screening
Future Sound of Mzansi – Film Screening 28 April 2015, 8pm Djam Lecture Theatre, SOAS dir. Nthato Mokgata & Lebogang Rasethaba, South Africa 2014, 1h38m Co-directed by performance artist and producer Spoek Mathambo, this documentary aims to explore, express, and… Read More ›
Modjaji’s 8th Birthday Party
On March 29th, Modjaji Books are having a party to celebrate being 8 years old this year. We are also setting up a Poetry Fund so that Modjaji Books can sustain our existing poetry publishing endeavours as well as create new… Read More ›
Event: South African Artists in Focus | The 2015 Wits Art Museum public lecture series
(c/o the Heritage Portal) Following on the success of the 2013 and 2014 WAM lecture series’ on African art, Wits Art Museum (WAM) and The Centre for Creative Arts of Africa (CCAA) will present this year’s lecture series, South African… Read More ›
Marlene Dumas at the Tate Modern
Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden Tate Modern, London 5 February – 10 May 2015 Marlene Dumas is one of the most prominent painters working today. Her intense, psychologically charged works explore themes of sexuality, love, death and shame, while… Read More ›
Some South African Literary Events in focus this week
Congratulations to Songeziwe Mahlangu who has won the #EtisalatPrize2014 #EtisalatPrizeforLiterature! — pen_southafrica (@pen_southafrica) March 15, 2015 As South African writer Songeziwe Mahlangu, with his novel Penumbra (Kwela, 2013), is announced as the winner of the second Etisalat Prize for Literature –… Read More ›
GRID Cape Town Photography Biennial – until March 15
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 ›
Terra incognita. Uncharted depths. Africa unknowable.
Short Story Day Africa‘s second collection of short stories Terra Incognita is an anthology of new speculative fiction from Africa, featuring the top nineteen stories from SSDA’s 2014 competition, edited this year by Nerine Dorman. This carefully curated collection is harvested from entries… Read More ›
CFP: Writing South Africa Now
Writing South Africa Now in conjunction with the Southern African Poetry Project University of Cambridge 26-27 June 2015 Venue: The English Faculty, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom CFP deadline: April 15, 2015 Writing South Africa Now is the UK’s foremost… Read More ›
A brief introduction to South African house music
AiW guest: Tom Simmert In the end it’s all DJ Lunga’s fault. Without the feature about him and his label Baainar Records in the German magazine BEAT, I’d never (or at least much later) have thought about South African House… Read More ›
Read more! On lists, labels and limits for ‘African women’s writing’
Inspired by Dele Meiji Fatunla and Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed‘s list of 50 women writers they believe ‘everyone’ should read, I’m hoping to complete their list of recommendations in 2015. It includes exciting developments in publishing over recent years, as well as many of’the… Read More ›
Compelling narratives: stretching ‘memoir’ in ‘African lives’
Geoff Wisner sets himself a sizeable task in ‘African Lives’, to introduce the life-writing of the continent: I don’t envy this anthologist. His introduction makes the case for the long history of autobiographical writing in Africa. Wisner argues it needs to be rescued, to be… Read More ›
Review – Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal
AiW Guest: James Smith. On Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-apartheid struggle (Jacana Media, 2014). To many the mere notion of an askari challenges. In the South African context it denotes someone who does… Read More ›
Miners Shot Down – Film Screening, 5 Feb 2015
Miners Shot Down – Film Screening Djam Lecture Theatre, SOAS Thursday 5 Feb, 7pm In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live… Read More ›
Review: Transition Magazine’s Special Issue on Nelson Mandela (116)
AiW Guest Kristen Roupenian A surprising number of essays in Transition’s special issue on Nelson Mandela share the same basic argument: in the ongoing transformation of Mandela into a global icon, something important is being lost. Therefore, those who wish… Read More ›
“All the talk in WWI seems to be about France…”*
Why were Africans consigned to the margins, sometimes altogether erased, when the drama of this war was narrated? (Okey Ndibe) Okey Ndibe‘s comment above reflected on the absence of acknowledgement for Africa and Africans in terms of a different global war,… Read More ›
Review: Mxolisi Nyezwa’s ‘Malikhanye’ – Are there words?
AiW Guest: Tom Penfold. ‘Malikhanye’: Are there words? i cannot understand why man exists and why things happen Mxolisi Nyezwa is a South African poet and Malikhanye (2011),[1] published by Deep South Press, is his third collection of poetry… No…. Read More ›
Zakes Mda, ‘No Artist is Subject to the State’. Chaired by Zoë Wicomb. Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2014.
The Zakes Mda session at the Edinburgh Book Festival, ‘No artist is subject to the state’, unfolded in all the best senses of the term. Chaired by Zoë Wicomb – who is succinctly described in The Scotsman as “a writer… Read More ›
Review: Alex Smith’s ‘Devilskein & Dearlove’
‘AiW Guest Kristen Roupenian’ If it has been a long time since you’ve read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s classic The Secret Garden—and if, in the meantime, your memory has been clouded by a series of overly charming movie adaptations—you may… Read More ›
The Responsibility of Writing in/for/about South Africa – after the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2014
AiW Guest: James Smith. During the Edinburgh International Book Festival I managed to catch three South African authors, Lauren Buekes and C.A. Davids, and Mark Gevisser. Three authors, writing in three different genres (although I realize that ‘genre’ in itself… Read More ›
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