WEALTH OF IDEAS

Send submissions by August 31st, 2009

If all goes as planned, I would like to feature a few agents on this blog in June, literary agents who blog. I would just post a few things they say in a very short interview (these are very busy people); since they blog, I thought they may not mind chatting with a fellow blogger. As far as I know, this will be a successful undertaking. If you know agents who blog, please bring them to my attention. Let's talk with them; agents are our friends (and this is not kissing up or pandering in any way). They are nice fellows.

The Alternative Information Center reports that on Saturday the Israeli police forcefully closed the Palestine Festival of Literature in East Jerusalem. "The festival included the participation of 17 internationally-known literary figures and an audience of local and international participants", the report reveals. In the same report, we learn that this is the second year of the festival. The inaugural one was attended last year by many renowned writers, including the South African author Chinua Achebe. South Africa, Nigeria, what's the difference? J.M Coetzee, after all, is a Zambian author. But I'm now focusing on the trivial. Disrupting, in fact dispersing, a writer's festival. Can you believe these guys? Read the whole story at AIC.

A chance visit to Barnes & Noble this afternoon led to this discovery: a book entitled Best African American Fiction 2009 . I am already a collector of the Best American Short Stories and all the other bests, so I was thrilled to discover another series. Best African American Fiction 2009 series is edited by Gerald Early. You know how these series work, right? There is a long-term series editor, who selects a guest editor every year, so the guest editor for the first issue of the series is E. Lynn Harris. The series is published by Bantam Books as a trade edition, you know, the usual stuff. The inaugral issue's ISBN is 9780553385342 and more product details can be found at Bantam-Dell . The three goals of the series are: 1. to bring to the attention of a wide variety of readers the best fiction published by African Americans in a particular year 2. to bring to their attention some of the lesser known sources that feature African American writing 3. to offer an organic, ongoin...

The Dambudzo Marechera conference took place on from May 15 to 17 at Oxford University at an event that has been described as the university's way of reclaiming an African poet that it once rejected. My interviews with Dambudzo Marechera scholars and/or proteges will cover this and other issues regarding the symposium. The (interview) issue is scheduled to post on June 15.

In writing, as in education and other services to, or opportunities for, humanity, there has to be an element of outreach. I am very happy with the work that organizers and sponsors of African writing awards are doing in discovering new talent, but I have often noticed these discoveries tend to focus on the continent's elites and often ignore (usually inadvertently) huge rural populations where talent might be hiding. Profiles of the winners of contests like the PEN South Africa, Caine, Commonwealth, and many others, tend to be of writers based mostly in urban areas, writers with access to EVERYTHING (and lately everythng means the internet). This falls short of saying that these are usually priviledged writers who could probably do just fine without needing to be discovered by an international award. Every writer needs to be discovered, some may argue, and they would be right, as long as they mean every possible talent we can pounce on (as some of the awards set out to do). I kno...

The new issue of Sea Breeze Journal is out. It features a rich mix of artistic genres which represents a vibrant artistic culture in Liberia and its Diaspora. The current issue's editor is also the Contributing Fiction Editor for Munyori Literary Journal . Great work Doeba Bropleh .

Priority Africa Network (PAN) presents Dambisa Moyo, in Conversation with John Wood. Author of DEAD AID: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa at the Museum of the African Diaspora , 685 Mission Street in San Francisco Thursday, June 4 6:00 pm Reception 6:30 Program begins Zambia-born Dambisa Moyo is an economist and the author of Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way For Africa ,published in the spring of 2009. The book offers proposals for developing countries to finance development, instead of relying on foreign aid. It became a New York Times bestseller upon its release in the United States and remains a bestseller amongst Political and Economic books.

Issue 3 of the three-year-old Cosumnes River Journal now has an online version . I am one of the sixteen people who make up the Editorial Team, and I am proud of this product. The journal comes out once a year (in May), but we are already accepting submissions for the next issue.

Uk-based Zimbabwean author and scholar, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, has interviewed NoViolet Mkha Bulawayo, a young Zimbabwean writer who was highly commended by J.M Coetzee in the PEN/Studzinski Literary Award for her short story "Snapshots". Mkha is an MFA student at Cornell University. Read the interview at arstinitiates . Mkha blogs at NoViolet . Go there and learn some Ndebele while reading about literature. Here are some numbers from the literary contest Mkha received the honorable mention: The 2009 PEN/Studzinski award attracted an unprecedented 827 entries, 625 of which met with the rules of entry. A team of 38 readers undertook 1446 readings under strict rules of author anonymity to shortlist 195 stories, and 34 stories were chosen as finalists by the PEN Editorial Board comprising Shaun Johnson, Anthony Fleischer, Justin Fox, Harry Garuba, Alastair King and Mary Watson. The finalists' stories will be published in an anthology, New Writing from Africa 2009, due for r...

The next issue of Munyori Literary Journal is going to post on June 15. My team is currently reading the submissions for different genres. Feel free to send your poetry, short stories, essays, reviews, interviews, etc.

The weekend of May 15 was a busy one for Zimbabwean literature. Scholars from all over the world met at Oxford University to celebrate Dambudzo Marechera's work and life. Noted scholars like Flora Veit-Wild, Memory Chirere, and others presented papers about Marechera. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't much international publicity about the actual symposium. Somehow I wanted to feel like I had been there too by watching something on BBC, YouTube, etc, but that's still okay. The fact that it happened helps publicize, in different scales, the work of this powerful Zimbabwean writer. Artsintiates has reported that House of Hunger was re-issued and relaunched at the event by Pearson Educational, which is reportedly planning to restore the African Writers Series. As most will recall, the AWS under Heineman was a strong force in the defining and canonization of what we call African Literature today. While the Marechera Symposium was going on, Petina Gappah was in Sout...

Yesterday I articulated that I am thinking of how nice it would be to have books or articles that discuss how to read African literature, a publication in the mode of Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why . Bloom's book looks at the different genres of literature and explains how to read by discussing key works that he calls the best for each category. He argues that most people are drifting away from reading because there are so many distractions, but if you still believe in reading, you might as well read the best work there is. Of course, the criteria Bloom uses to judge what's best is questionable as his best cannot be everyone's best, which is why, before I start telling people how to read African literature, which will end up being about telling them what to read, I should first talk with other readers to find out what they think of the category of African literaure itself. Jonathan Masere has responded, and below are his answers to the questionaire I built yesterday...

I am fascinated by the authority assumed in Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why . In that book he goes on to discuss authors whom everyone who is serious about reading should read in the literary categories of short story, poetry, novels, plays, and more novels. Quite a few of my favorite authors on his list, and I like how he confidently argues that by reading those writers, in the way he suggests, you will enrich not only your reading experience, but also your life. If you don't read the books suggested in this book, you probably don't know how to read, Bloom seems to argue. So now I am thinking....with the increasing popularity of African literature (this is not to say it has not been popular before), there is a need (once again) for books that tell readers how to read the literature (assuming that they don't know what to read, or if they know, where to begin. Especially where to begin.) So I can already anticipate answering questions like these: 1. What exactly is A...

Petina Gappah's Elegy for Easterly has been nominated for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. It is one of the 57 short story collections longlisted for this prestigious international short fiction competition. The Prize website describes the competition as follows: The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award is an annual award of €35,000 and is currently the world's richest prize for the short story form. The award is in memory of the late Frank O'Connor, one of the world's most renowned short story writers. The award, organised by the Munster Literature Centre and funded by Cork City Council, is presented in O'Connor's hometown of Cork, Ireland, at the end of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival. The prize is awarded to the author of the book judged to be the best collection of stories published in English for the first time anywhere in the world in the twelve months between September of one year and August o...

On February 4 I reported that Ignatius Mabasa (one of the leading contemporary Zimbabwean writers and a friend of mine) would be reading Shona poetry at the San Francisco Intenational Poetry Festival. Well, now I would like to report that Carla Badillo Coronado, a poet and dancer from Eduador, South America, will be featured at the same festival. This is an international festival, and a really good one for Northen California, which is put together by the city of San Franciso, the San Fransico Poet Laureate, and the Friends of the San Francisco library. Carla Coronado, who has agreed to participate in an interview with me, is one of the poets from 15 different countries to gather in San Francisco July 23 to 27. Describing her role at the festival, Coronado said, "I will carry the voices of my ancestors with me, and also I will dance in the Festival (traditional dance from the Andes)". Plans are under way to bring both Mabasa and Badillo to the Sacramento Poetry Center in July...

On Monday night I hosted a performance by Brad Buchanan, professor of British Lit at Sac State, and Farrah Field from Brooklyn, New York. The two were amazing, and the open mic afterwards was energizing. That's the thing, the energy I get from these readings--I get so inspired I become restless. A surge of creativity. Brad Buchanan recited (performed) English Poetry from John Milton to Dylan Thomas, famous selections. His rendition of Yeat's "The Second Coming" was a subliminal moment. I was sitting there thinking, "Walking around with these masterpieces in your head has to have a certain effect on you own writing". And of course, Brad has writtehn two well-crafted collections, The Miracle Shirker and Swimming the Mirror , both of which I have had the pleasure to read many times. I have nearly destroyed my Miracle Shirker because of good habit of crafting my poetry inside other poets' books. I hate that empty space we leave on the right of the page...it...

I like to read. You should see me in a library or bookstore; all kinds of bookstores (big chains, small independent, used, thrift store book sections, library booksales). I like to read. And as I read my writers, I enjoy discovering what they like to read, so as to get information about more books I can read. And my writers often don't disappoint--they point me to other amazing writers. It is always good to read what they like to read. I recently discovered Colm Toibin, an Irish writer who has often been compared to James Joyce and others. And those others happen to be writers I have read. I want a writer to point me to writers that I already thought were good, but I also want a them to help me discover new writers along the way. Petina Gappah, because she talks about her writing as well as her reading process all the time, just helped me discover Toibin, and I am reading The Master , which uses the American writer Henry James as the main subject of the story, in the same way that ...

As new books by Zimbabwean writers pour out (I can safely say this), I wonder about the state of Zimbabwean readership. Granted, some of these books will have a healthy readership by non-Zimbabweans., which is usually always the case., especially for those books published outside of Zimbabwe. Since most of the people I network with are writers, I often think that everyone around me is reading. You know, reading that's not attached to a class, reading for pleasure even, or reading just to get a sense of how the literature is responding to the Zimbabwean situation. I tend to forget then that people who should be reading these books are not reading them. How do you know, you ask? Well, when I go to a whole gathering of Zimbabweans and I mention a book like Harare North , Somewhere in this Country , Elegy for Easterly , etc, and people have no idea what I am talking about, I am a bit concerned, not that it is any of my business. But it is my business, because, as a writer, I certainly ...

On Monday, May 11, I am hosting a performance of the brief history of British Poetry from John Milton to Dylan Thomas by Brad Buchanan and Farrah Field. This is happening at the Sacramento Poetry Center. The time of the event is 7:30 pm. Brad Buchanan is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Sacramento, where he teaches Creative Writing and Modern British Literature. His poetry has appeared in more than 140 journals worldwide, including The Antigonish Review, Canadian Literature, Fulcrum, The Fiddlehead, Grain, and The Wisconsin Review . He has published two books of poetry: The Miracle Shirker (2005) and Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter (2008), and is co-founder of Roan Press , a small publishing operation (www.roanpress.com). Farrah Field is the author of Rising (Four Way Books, 2009), winner of the The Larry Levis Prize. Her poems have appeared in many publications including Harp & Altar, Typo, Linebreak, The Cortland Review, 42Opus, the Mis...

Here is a review of Harare North by Sarah Ladipo Manyika , a Zimbabwean (or Nigerian) writer based in San Francisco. Sarah Ladipo Manyika grew up in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, and England. She holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and teaches literature at San Francisco State University (not very far from where I used to teach, if that counts for anything). Her writing includes published essays, academic papers, book reviews and short stories. Sarah's first novel, In Dependence , is published by Legend Press (2008) I enjoyed "Mr Wonder", one of her stories (in Women Writing Zimbabwe ),where a wife capitalizes on the guilty conscience of her cheating husband to have him sponsor an expensive vacation in San Francisco. And as the plot unfolds (first in Zimbabwe, then in California) we learn so much about ambition and its obstacles. Manyika's focus in the Harare North review is different from (and soberer than)most that have been published in the big UK pape...

I introduce Jennifer Armstrong, a Dambudzo Marechera scholar based in Australia. In this interview she reveals the facts behind her evocative memoir and talks about her commitment to Dambudzo Marechera scholarship. She will present on Black Sunlight at the Dambudzo Marechera Conference at Oxford University on May 15. Minus the Morning by Jennifer Armstrong First, let me congratulate you for two things--for the release of your memoir Minus the Morning , and for being part of the historic Dambudzo Marechera Conference at Oxford University. As I read the memoir, I am enjoying the way you tell the story, the way you remember things, the way you do memoir. In what ways do you think your memoir breaks or improves on memoir-writing rules? Thank you very much Emmanuel. These are a thought-provoking questions indeed. After struggling with my memoir for many years, I realised that it simply could not have been written in a conventional way. A conventional memoir requires the continuity of a sel...

Wealth of Ideas is featuring author interviews in May and June. I will talk with poets, writers, and scholars on a wide range of literary issues. Terry a O'Neal The first interview features Sacramento author and poet Terry a O'Neal , who is going to be the guest speaker in my Diop Scholars English class at CRC. The class is at 10:30 am on Tuesday, May 5. This will be Terry's second appearance at CRC, after her Black History Month reading on February 16. I have also hosted her reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center , where she treated us to an evening of inspiring and enlightening poetry. Now she is coming to talk with the Diop Scholars about her novel, Sweet Lavender , which the class uses as a set-book. In this interview Terry a O'Neal talks about her writing, poetry, film, and other projects. Congratulations on the success of the Black History Bee. Could you please explain what prompted you to start this project and what your future plans are for it? It is important...