By Tolu Ogunlesi NAIROBI: “Words are the most important thing about coming together, said Kate Adie, the BBC’s former Chief News Correspondent, “and that is what Storymoja is all about.” Adie was speaking in Nairobi at a party held to round off this year’s Storymoja Hay Festival, which took place from July 31 to August 2. It is the first spin-off …
Bonus Material: An African Short Story Renaissance
By Edward Nawotka In Africa, short story writing is thriving and the £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing has had a great deal to do with this resurgence. The prize is given for a previously published work of fiction not longer than 10,000 words written in English by an African. It is named for the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of …
Who Controls African Literature?
Editorial by Tolu Ogunlesi LAGOS: The literary world is once again shining a spotlight on Africa. There are new prizes: the South Africa-based PEN Studzinski Literary Award for short stories, and the Penguin Prize for African Writing, a pan-African prize covering both fiction and non-fiction genres. There’s a new book series, the “Penguin African Writers Series,” which will include not …
Bonus Material: Hay Festival Teams with Nairobi’s Storymoja
By Edward Nawotka NAIROBI: The inaugural Storymoja Hay Festival will take place in Nairobi, Kenya this July 31-August 2. A collaboration between the UK’s Hay Festival and Nairobi’s Storymoja, with 132 events and 50 hours of programming featuring a veritable plethora of writers, artists, musicians and academics from across Africa. The event is the latest project of the Storymoja writing …
Accra Provides Mysterious Milieu for Ghanaian-American Novelist
By Kwei Quartey ACCRA, GHANA: About 10 years ago, I wrote a novel set in Africa. An agent to whom I sent the first pages turned it down and told me, “There are two places on earth that no one has the slightest interest in reading about: Afghanistan and Africa.” What a difference a decade makes: Khaled Hosseini’s smash hits …
Bonus Material: Gaborone’s No. 1 Ladies Opera House
By Edward Nawotka The city of Gaborone, Botswana has become known to many readers through Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith’s popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels and some local entrepreneurs had started the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency tours. It’s odd to think of this very sedate, business minded capitol as a popular destination for tourists — when I …
Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Straddling Continents
By Edward Nawotka TORONTO: “In the West we have constructed a narrative where African wars and poverty are meaningless, with no real political or historical context, which suggests misery is this atavistic thing,” says Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “But what gets forgotten is at the same time all this is happening, people are falling in love, people are still …
Cape Town Book Fair Attracts Crowds, Questions Role
By Edward Nawotka SOUTH AFRICA: “Sustainability of the Fair is a challenge, if you measure it against what it intends to be as a trade event, then we have significant challenges ahead of us,” said Vanessa Badroodien, director of the Cape Town Book Fair, which has been running since June 13, and ends today. “It’s simply hard for publishers to …
An American Eyes New African Lit
By Edward Nawotka On the face of it, Rob Spillman is an unlikely candidate to be editor of Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing. He is, after all, a white guy from Brooklyn. “A few years ago I published an international issue of Tin House, the literary journal I edit,” says Spillman. “For six months I …