WEALTH OF IDEAS

California's Capitol City Young Writers, a group whose operations are similar to the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe, are meeting at Sacramento State University on December 5. The Discussion topic is on the art of non-fiction writing. The young writers will attend workshops by the following writers: JENNIFER BASYE SANDER Jennifer has been creating successful book products since 1983. She has worked in all aspects of the book publishing business, everything from book retailing to book publicity, from authoring New York Times bestselling books herself to acquiring them for a large trade publisher. She is also the author, co-author, or ghostwriter of more than a thirty books herself, including the recent gift book hits Wear More Cashmere and The Martini Diet. Along with the New York agent Sheree Bykofsky, Jennifer authored The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published, which is now in its 4th revised edition and has over 100,000 copies in print. A graduate of Mills C...

When you become serious with fiction writing, you begin to understand that there is a difference between you and your narrator, even in stories that you consider autobiographical. The writer just becomes the facilitator of what's told, but how its told may be completely dependent on the narrative POV you have selected. It is very important to let this narrator have an independent voice. I am reading Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence , whose narrator shocked me by "abandoning" the story and telling the reader that Orhan Pamuk himself will finish the story, and as you read along, you can see that the author agreed to do so. Here is a narrator so self-aware and independent that he knows his limits, knows where he can stop and authorize or trust the author to finish telling the story. Lately, I have been writing stories told by female narrators and this has become an example of writing what I don't know, to open new possibilities, and I have found myself worrying ...

This Thanksgiving I am thankful that I received my contributor copy of State of the Nation . It is a collection of thirty poets' works, edited by Tinashe Mushakavanhu and David Nettleingam. I haven't read all the poems, but I like how each poet was allowed to submit a short essay on craft or the process of writing. Mine, for instance, focused on my poetic journey, which, as you can imagine, tried to cover details about the many writing activities I was involved in growing up. It is an opportunity to get the writers to talk about their writing, something that most of us try to do in the wrong places...[like a friend just warned me against trying to talk about writing at the Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, and I will comply]. I am not going to review this book, since I am in it, but check this blog next week for a review from Memory Chirere. Featuring his review here will be an honor. I can tell you that there are many good things about this book, especially the essays by Ignatius ...

At 1196 pages, The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard has to be the longest short story collection I have ever read. It contains 94 stories, and comes at a time of renewed interest in the short story. I am going to review this book for the Sacramento or San Francisco Book Review , but for now, here are some details from W.W. Norton & Company, the publisher. Ballard passed away in April after a long battle with cancer, so this book comes as a perfect way to commemorate his fiction career. The stories span from 1956 to around 1996. Admired by authors like kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess, Susan Sontag, Ballard is credited with having invented cyberpunk and his novels and short fiction have influenced speculative fiction, but there is a literary quality to his "earnest, thoughtful, and elegant" (Norton) use of the genre. He was obsessed with human life in the face of rapid change, the concept of the near future reigning in all his works, which tend to...

I am a new-comer to the American short story writer and poet, Raymond Carver, but from the moment I read "Cathedral", I have been hooked. I was drawn to him first by what he says in " Principles of a Story ", his 1989 essay, which talks about the ease with which he approached short story writing ("Get in, get out"). Ease in the sense that he had to learn to demystify the writing process and aim for specificity, realism, clarity, and the sheer joy of the writing process (even where it may seem exhausting and time-consuming, the writer was trying to make an honest effort of producing a story, not because it was a special, world-changing story, but a creation, free of gimmicks and pretentiousness). After I finished reading this short essay and sharing it to a writer's workshop last April, I felt liberated, I loosened up in my approach to writing and lost some of the seriousness and faithful belief in the mystery of writing that had for years pursued me. W...

NSAA Today we feature a spoken word whose works I find moving. I have attended many of his performances, and we have shared the stage on several occassions. He is also a regular in the Sacramento Poetry scene, particularly at the Sacramento Poetry Center, Luna's Cafe, and the Mahogany poetry series, where he is a host. Please meet the poet known as NSAA. 1. Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. First, can you tell us a bit about yourself? My stage name is NSAA pronounced (en-sah-ah). It’s an African adinkra symbol that basically means quality, as I understand it. It’s like saying "The real McCoy". What I like about the word/symbol is that it is based on the quality of cloth, for example; this cloth is hand made nsaa. I’m a bit of an odd duck I’m afraid to say, my stage name is a case in point, how odd I will keep on the low-low, very political too. I love NPR, BBC and Democracy Now. My pet peeve right now, driving me insane, is what’s up with congress not fighting...

This post features MyAfricanDiaspora co-founder, Veronica Henry. In this blog she introduces the organization and its mission, and provides information on the group's first Annual short story competition. Enjoy. Our website: www.myafricandiaspora.com , provides news and information aimed at reconnecting the African Diaspora. My partner and I launched the site after tracing our African ancestry to Sierra Leone and deciding to use the power of the Internet to help foster the reconnection between people of African descent and their ancestral homes. We're sponsoring a Short Story Writing Competition - open to anyone, any country or continent, but the main character must be of African descent. I believe this is a first of its kind, an international competition focused on providing positive, diverse images of people of color in literature. I'd like to invite all writers to participate and hope you'd like to help us spread the word. Full contest details are available here and...

Chielo Zona Eze, author of The Trial of Robert Mugabe , blogs frequently on African Literature News & Review ,and I follow his news updates on African literature. Brief postings that link you to the source. His latest post is on Chinua Achebe's rejection of the label "Father of African Literature", which has been reported on the Guardian and is based on an interview done by the Brown University newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald . Eze's blog will lead to other news about African literature, interesting reviews on such books as Harare North , An Elegy for Easterly , The Thing Around Your Neck , and many others. Although short, his entries show a devotion to African literature, sometimes pure excitement, as when the announcement was made about the Oprah selection of Uwem Akpan's short story collection. Eze's entry celebrated the moment as great for African writers, pointing out that some agents and editors there may realize that they can profit from African...

I am trying to take Wealth of Ideas (WOI) to another level by encouraging the participation of other writers/bloggers. If you have a topic you would like to share with readers of WOI, please contact me at manu@munyori.com to express your interest, or just submit your blog entry to me using the same email address. Here is the range of possible topics: 1 Book Reviews : They don't have to be formal. Just your thoughts about a book you read recently, or one you read a long time ago. 2. Current issues and enduring questions : Yes, current issues, politics, etc. After all, we are called Wealth of Ideas . If you have new insights on an enduring question--what is love in the 21st century, what is beauty, etc, send us something. 3. Entries on tools for the writer's craft : You are an editor, a publisher, etc, and you want to give us advice on a craft issue--plot, point of view, detail, characterization, etc, send us something, help us out. I would do this myself, but I am trying to foll...

Many people have said 2009 is the year of the short story. And a lot of the short story collections published this year have won awards ranging from Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (which, of course, wouldn't be awarded to a novel or poetry collection), the Guardian Fiction Award and many others I can't think of right now. Only yesterday (Friday, November 6), CNN's Anderson Cooper and Oprah's Oprah Winfrey admitted that this had been the year they fell in love with the short story through their reading of Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them. For this reason, they have decided to co-broadcast a discussion of the book on Monday (9pm Eastern/8pm Central Time). This is a huge event for a short story collection. If all goes well, I may participate in some small way in the Webcast. Say You're One of Them has already been on the New York Times best seller list for weeks, and what that means is that Americans are buying (and reading) this book...

David Mungoshi, Vice President of PAWA . Zimbabwean writer David Mungoshi, whose new novel, The Fading Sun , is forthcoming from Lion Press, will present a paper at the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) in Ghana. This event,running from November 4 to 7 and attended by writers like Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrion, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiongo and others, will focus on the theme: "LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN A FRACTURED WORLD". Wole Soyinka will deliver the keynote speech. David Mungoshi will present a paper on HIV and its depiction in contemporary Southern African writing. Among other things, the paper reveals that there is "now a body of creative writing whose main driver is the HIV and AIDS pandemic." Mungoshi argues that "this writing cuts across all the literary genres (poetry, the short story, the novel and drama) and... the gender divide." The paper also examines "the language question with a view to suggesting how s...

Date: Friday, November 13, 2009 Time: 6:00pm - 11:00pm Location: Guild Theater Street: 2828 35th Street City/Town: Sacramento, CA FEATURING: Hour 1 (6 poets) 6-7pm Jim Nolt Emmanuel Sigauke Bari Kennedy Kate Asche Danny Romero Anna Marie Hour 2 (4 poets) 7-8pm Frank Withrow Lawrence Dinkins Sam Pierstorff Quinton Duval Hour 3 (Two dance groups, 1 band and one singer) 8-9pm Vocalist Carla Fleming Live band LSB Dance group JUSTICE Dance group TBA Hour 4 (4 poets) 9-10pm Kathleen Lynch Brad Buchanan Terry Moore Supanova Hour 5 (3 Poets) 10-11pm Bob Stanley Phoenyx Reign NerCity from Oakland Sponsored by the Sacramento Poetry Center & The Center for Fathers and Families. www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org www.fathersandfamilies.com

Chris Mlalazi This is big. Congratulations are in order for Chris, for his impressive creative journey from NAMA (Zimbabwe) to NOMA (Japan). His short story collection, Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township has won an Honourable Mention in the 2009 Noma Awards, one of the most significant book prizes in Africa. The book was one of the four books shortlisted for the 2009 Award, chosen from submissions by 43 publishers in 12 different African countries. Sefi Atta of Nigeria won Noma Award, worth $10 000, for her short story collection Lawless and Other Stories , which is published in the USA as News from Home . Tunisian writer Sonia Chamkhi’s Leila ou la femme de l’aube , and Love in the Time of Treason , by South Africa’s Zubeida Jaffer also received the Honourable Mention. The other members of the Jury in 2009 were Walter Bgoya from Tanzania (jury chair, Professor Simon Gikandi (a US-based expert on African literature), Robert Schirmer Professor of English at Princeton Unive...