WEALTH OF IDEAS

Maureen Moore, in her review of my short story "Call Center", writes, "The call center, then, becomes a metaphor for power struggles in the 21st century. In Tari's mind, Mr. Johnston is a "stupid, ignorant moron." And the ambiguity of Tari's accent to Mr. Johnston is part of the problem, and the source for the struggle. This struggle for power can also be seen in the names assigned to each character: Tari, the [misunderstood] employee of the world (does he live in India, Zimbabwe or Stockton, CA?), is referred to informally by his first name. Mr. Johnston, the mainstream (i.e., "white") customer from Redding, CA is known by his formal name. The hierarchy of power is established by the formal and informal uses of their names." Read more on Maureen Moore's Pinnacles and the Pedestrian .

This list of best books of the first decade of this century was compiled by The Times (UK ). The list on their website has the books' synopses. 100 The Position by Meg Wolitzer (2005) 99 The Lost Leader by Mick Imlah (2008) 98 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie(2007) 97 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007) 96 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (2006) 95 The Emperor’s Babe by Bernardine Evaristo (2001) 87 The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007) 86 District and Circle by Seamus Heaney (2006) 85 Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 by Antony Beevor (2002) 84 Unless by Carol Shields (2002) 83 This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (2008) 94 Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta (2005) 93 The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (2008) 92 Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (2009) 91 My Father and other Working-Class Football H...

"Alice Munro won the Man Booker International, Raymond Carver's widow published a revised edition of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and fine collections appeared from old hands and debutantes. This year proved that reports of the short story's death have been greatly exaggerated..." writes Chris Power at the Guardian Book Blog. What's good to know is that 2010 already promises to be another year of the short story. By this--year of the short story--we mean many things, but one that's obvious is that there seems to be consent that, as Chris points out, the short story is alive (Some people thought it was dead).

Go read my story, " Sizinda Sunset ", on Saraba Magazine.

The Associated Press reports that South African poet and anti-apatheid activist Dennis Brutus has died. More details here. Brutus was an inspiring poet. I read some of his poems at the University of Zimbabwe, and chatted with the him briefly in 1994 at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. He contributed to the popularity of African poetry through his many interviews, and he wrote a dozen or so collections of poetry. Rest in peace.

African Writing (AW) issue number 8, a real holiday treat, is now out. It features my interview with Petina Gappah, my story "Cross Country", a great story by the talented Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, and a lot more interviews, reviews (with one by Memory Chirere)and more fiction, poetry! Here are a couple of excerpts: AW : While on the subject of labels, let’s talk about your identity as a writer. You have made it clear that you don’t consider yourself an African writer because “it comes with certain expectations of you”. First, do you think the question of your identification with Zimbabwe, Africa, Switzerland or the universe is relevant in what you do as a writer ? PG : I am a lawyer. When the government officials I work with come to the ACWL for assistance with their trade matters, they do not come to see an African lawyer. They come to see Petina Gappah, a lawyer with more than 10 years of experience in WTO law, just as they come to see my colleagues, also experienced lawyers, wh...

I am one of the editors of The Tule Review , a publication of the Sacramento Poetry Center, which welcomes submissions for the next issue — now 40-50 pages and perfect bound — with an anticipated publication date in June 2010. We consider poetry of all styles and forms (except Haiku). Submission Guidelines: • Considers poetry of all styles and forms (except Haiku). • Send up to six poems, maximum 96 lines per poem. • Submission deadline for the June 2010 issue is Feb. 27, 2010; submissions received after that date may be considered for a future issue. • Include name, street and e-mail addresses on each page of submission. • Provide a short bio, not to exceed five lines. • We prefer submission via email with poems attached in a single MSWord document (.doc or .docx format). • E-mail submissions to tulereview@sacramentopoetrycenter.org Please specify "Tule Submission" in the subject line. • Hard copy submissions are also accepted. Mail those to: Sacramento Poetry Center c...

I will not list my favorite books this year. I doubt that I have ever listed favorite books on this blog ever. It's often a hard decision, but I tend to be too busy when everyone is listing their favorite books. Shortly, however, I will talk about my reading adventures of 2009, dropping names excessively, because this has been a year of discovering many writers. Then I will probably share a list of the books I am scheduled to read by, let's say, January 14 Fiction books mostly, although there is a thick collection of essays on American architecture on the pile. I may blog about other people's favorite books though; a few of the ones I have seen are worth blogging about. I smile as I write this because I like it when people read, especially if they happen to have read what I read as well....

"Some people think Zimbabweans are on the cowardly side when they employ what I call survival strategies. Faced with extreme danger to their person, Zimbabweans use two major approaches: run away or fall silent. So, the diasporans took the first option, to escape "to live to fight another day", as Bob Marley says. It is pointless to be a dead hero. No Zimbabwean will engage in "suicide bombing", writes Chenjerai Hove in his new essay published in the Mail & Guardian of South Africa. Read the rest of the essay here.

Read the essay here.

There is general agreement, in my book circles, that 2009 is the year of the short story. Of course, this is not to say that we are not prepared to accept 2010 as a short story year if it becomes one. I asked the question somewhere, perhaps in one of my classes, about why it would make sense for 2009 to be a short story year, and the answers were practical: "Global warming", "shortening reading spans", and "a rediscovery of the short story". So perhaps the Melvillean big American novel may go out of fashion on the basis of green thinking. I like that reason. There is nothng wrong with being concise out of necessity. Then once in a while you hear that a 1200 page collection of J.G. Ballard's short stories has been published, then you say, "short stories!" "That's not all," you are told, "they just came out with another collection: Raymond Carver's stories in one volume." You start doubting whether the size of the bo...

I would like to congratulate Petina Gappah for winning the 2009 Guardian First Book Award with her hard-working short story collection, An Elegy for Easterly . Yes, hard-working, because this book has been very active since its publication in May; it has sent its author to an international book tour, has been on the short-list of the Flannery O'Connor Short Story Award (2009)and has touched the hearts of many readers worldwide. The £10,000 prize is well-deserved, and I get the feeling that this is just the beginning of many things to come. Here are the words of The Guardian's Mark Brown breaking the news December 2: "Geneva-based international trade lawyer whose poignant, humane and funny collection of stories about her home country, Zimbabwe, has impressed critics was tonight named winner of the Guardian First Book Award. Petina Gappah became only the second short story writer to win the award in its 10-year history, the first being Yiyun Li in 2006. Gappah's collect...

Title : "State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry" Publisher : Conversation Press (UK) Editors : Tinashe Mushakavanhu and David Nettleingham Reviewer : Memory Chirere When I received this book, ‘State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean poetry’, its very pointed title hinted that it is a project on Zimbabwe now as seen by its various poets. I know that the state of our beloved but beleaguered nation, Zimbabwe is now well known. Now a term ‘Zimbabwean crisis’ has even been spawned. Whatever way you look at it, the Zimbabwean crisis is characterized by serious food shortages, lack of jobs, rampant underpaying of civil servants, acute brain drain and the general collapse of public amenities. Definition(s) and causes of this crisis, in Zimbabwe, fall desperately and untidily too, between an oppositional view and the establishment/government view. A particular incident associated with the genesis of this crisis is the giving out of hefty gratuities to the liberation ...

Memory Chirere has opened a blog. Most know him as a short fiction writer from Zimbabwe, who sometimes travels to places like Oxford University to present papers on Dambudzo Marechera, or to Namibia to lecture on poetry. He is also a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Zimbabwe, and, in addition to what he calls his "occasional" short fiction writing, he is a poet, a critic (one of the best reviewers in Zimbabwean literature), and a voracious reader of world literature. He is, in short, a good friend of mine. I am happy that he now has a blog, a site that might turn out to be a place for many to hang out.... Check it out at KwaChirere and read the flash fiction piece he posted.