WEALTH OF IDEAS

Naomi Benaron, whose short story, "The Geology of Ghosts", recently appeared on Munyori Literary Journal , is the winner of the 2010 Bellwether Prize, worth $25 000. 00, for her novel manuscript Running the Rift , which is set in Rwanda. The Bellwether Prize of fiction, coordinated by Barbara Kingsolver, supports literature of social justice, and Naomi Benaron, whose works are set in Africa, particularly in Rwanda, is a perfect fit. And she is not new to literary awards; her debut collection of short stories, Love Letters from a Fat Man , won 2006 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction.I have read and enjoyed her work, including the manuscript of Running the Rift . Barbara Kingsolver called the manuscript "culturally rich and completely engrossing. It engages the reader with complex political questions about ethnic animosity in Rwanda and so many other issues relevant to North American readers. For one, it conveys the impossibility of remaining neutral within a climate of...

African Roar Synopis: African Roar is a fiction anthology drawn from the very best stories published from 2007-2009, in the StoryTime weekly literary ezine dedicated to publishing African writers. Between these covers you will find eleven stories that stand as a testament to the upsurge of talented African writers boldly utilising the cutting edge of technology and the writing craft to be read globally. Spanning Africa and the African Diaspora in past, present and future, each story has a fresh and diverse vision that opens up new vistas of experience. From the lucid terrors of domestic violence through the eyes of a child, and the anguish of those left behind by a fleeing Diaspora, to a full circle, when the prey becomes the hunter and has the opportunity for revenge, and a dryly humourous look at what it's like to lose a quarter of your brain, to name just a few of the treasures that lie within. Cover Blurbs: "With a selection of finely-wrought stories that are (mostly) ...

African Roar: An Eclectic Collection of African Short Stories, Edited by Ivor W. Hartmann & Emmanuel Sigauke It's almost here, scheduled for publication next week. Ivor and I have enjoyed work with the writers in this collection, and I can't wait to see the final hardy copy product. Visit the African Roar website for more information. This collection contains eleven short stories that deal with a wide range of issues.

"A prize that focuses attention on the African origins of the writers allows the judges, faced with a pile of submissions, the freedom to dismiss that unifying criterion. While the wider world and the publishing industry may worry over this determinant, for us, it was a given and we could focus instead on finding the very best. This list, with all its variety, shows that great writing just gets on with it – shrugging off the bounds of geography and the colonial past, and confounding expectation," writes Ellah Allfrey , one of the 2010 Caine Prize judges. The Eleventh Caine Prize shortlist was announced today, April 26 and has been described as "uniquely powerful". In the words of one of the judges,"Some are quite familiar stories - the white boss and the black servants, security, violence – but each one has an extra dimension that helped it stand out from the crowd and made it quite difficult to forget....Not only are [the] stories all confident, ambitious and ...

I will be teaching two sessions entitled "The Making of a Story". For more details about this conference, click here.

The Spring Issue of Slow Trains is out, and it features one of my stories, "Pocket Money". I love this one because it is one of the Mukoma collection I am putting together. Here is an excerpt: He had bought me three different books. One was for English, a language he said I was going to learn properly at school, the other was for Shona, which he said was the formal name of the language we spoke, and the third was for what he explained as the numbers subject, Mathematics. As he explained each book, he looked in the air as if he was thinking about something serious, then he would let out a brief laugh and continue talking with a boyish joy. I knew what English was because I had heard him speak it with his friends, then once in a while when Mai said things like "Fokof! Fokof!" I knew that was English. Once in a while, drunk old men and women at beer gatherings at our home would argue, and always ended up throwing in English words like “Blarry furu!”, “I blast you!” a...

2010 SPC Annual Writing Conference with Joseph Lease, Toni Mirosevich, Donna de la Perriere, Flatman Crooked, Indigo Moor, Peter Grandbois and Foshang with Lawrence Dinkins and Ross Hammond Friday April 16, 2010 7:30 PM Saturday April 17, 2010 10:00 AM to 6:30 PM @R25 at 1719 25th Street Sacramento, California All readings and workshops are FREE For registration, contact Tim Kahl at tnklbnny@frontiernet.net

On April 12, I am hosting a Sacramento Poetry Center reading featuring Nicole Griffin (Oakland), Catherine Daly (Los Angeles, and Margaret Hoehn (Sacramento). All are invited to this night of great poetry. Here are the details: Nicole Griffin Nicole Griffin is a writer and social activist living and loving in Oakland by way of Sacramento. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry at Mills College in Oakland last spring and completed June Jordan’s Student-Teacher-Poet program, Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley. Her poems have appeared in the anthology, What I Want from You, The Walrus and The Womanist. She is currently working on her first book of poems, entitled, The Body Remembers. Catherine Daly Catherine Daly is author of eight books of poetry. She has worked as a technical architect for twenty years; much of her work engages technology. Three of her books are available online, and she has also developed online courseware in creative writing. She has an MFA from Columbia...

I will be the guest poet at Majestic Lounge's International Poetic Affair. Cynthia Adebanji will be the guest singer. This April 14 event is scheduled for 7 PM. See you there.