WEALTH OF IDEAS

Cordite Books, the new crime and spy fiction imprint of  Parresia Publishers Ltd ., has announced the winner its 2014 Crime Fiction Contest. The winner is Zimbabwean writer Blessing Musariri. She won with the manuscript Useful Knowledge for a World Class Detective.  The $1000 money prize also comes with a Cordite Books publishing deal. The second place winner is Demola Adeniran with Descent of the Hills and third place is David Oritogun with “The World is Your Oyster.” They will receive $250 and $200 respectively. The competition was announced in 2013 and received over 70 manuscripts from all over the continent.   The contest judge is Helon Habila, who is the editor of  Cordite Books. He has described  Musariri's manuscript  as  “intelligent and well written. A hardcore detective story in the tradition of No 1 Ladies Detective Agency – but totally original in its own way. The protagonist is a 25 year old, plucky, ambitious, girl with an intere...

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT RELEASE DATE: 4/11/14 IN MEMOIR RELEASED ON NATIONAL DAY OF SILENCE, AFRICAN AUTHOR SHARES STORY OF SURVIVING ABUSE, FIGHTING DEPORTATION, AND COMING OUT AS LESBIAN In a story faced with obstacles where many people may give up, African author Ruth Marimo proves she is a fighter. OUTsider: Crossing Borders. Breaking Rules. Gaining Pride. is a heartfelt autobiography where readers are introduced to a fierce, forthright woman who has confronted life’s obstacles, and has overcome them with strength, courage, and honesty. Born  in  Zimbabwe,  Marimo  has  traveled  the  world,  gaining  insight  and  deep appreciation  for  the  plight  of  the  illegal  immigrant.  Living  as  an  undocumented immigrant, she details the daily struggles to survive as a health‐care worker and to thrive as a wife and mother. Complicating matters, for decades Marimo ...

Sacramento, Calif : On June 24, Stories on Stage will feature readings of short stories by African writers Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda), Ivor W. Hartmann (Zimbabwe), and Gothataone Moeng (Botswana). This event, which I will guest host, takes place at the Sacramento Poetry Center, the monthly venue of Stories on Stage. While this special feature is the first of its kind, my hope is that other African writers will take the opportunity to send their stories as the series, which usually features short fiction by established and emerging writers from Sacramento and surrounding areas, but is set to expand way beyond, as this special event demonstrates. Usually introduced by their writers, the stories are read by actors. Since the writers featured on June 24 are not going to be present at the event, I will read the introductions they sent to Stories on Stage. I look forward to this and similar readings. The SoS series runs on the last Friday of every month. So here are the details of the feature...

I wanted this post to focus specifically on Zimbabwean writers, but it is applicable to most African writers as well. In fact, it's relevant to most writers anywhere. The message is simple: write what you want, or better, write what you feel like writing. The how may be influenced by outside forces, and often, that's good for the prose or the poetry. As for the why , you would have to make it apparent at some point in the process. For now, write what's within your radar (and this is not to say write what you know...but that which gets in the field of your writerly sensors). This post is in response to the feeling I get reading the non-fictional writings, the occasional prose , of some writers who seem to argue that writing about the past takes us to an exhausted field. Since this is a blog entry, I am not going to require myself to prove who these people are; perhaps I am imagining them, but the argument that creative writing should deal with topical issues seems to violat...

Mirirai Moyo, a promising emerging writer from Zimbabwe, is one of the winners of the 2010 Golden Baobab Award, which features African stories for children anywhere. Moyo is not new to awards. In 1996, she was the Harare Region Winner for the Randalls National Essay Competition. Her short stories have featured in The Sunday Mail, Fascinating Tales and Parade as well as Drum Magazine’s fiction segment. Her radio play, Belonging, was awarded Honourable Mention in the BBC African Performance 2008 and published in Rory Kilalea's collection In the Continuum and Other Plays (Weaver Press). What I find fascinating so far is how Mirirai Moyo features animal characters in her stories to deal with the realistic issues that concern humans. As the interview below shows, Moyo appreciates the power of the traditional story-telling tradition, but she puts a new twist to her story-telling to address contemporary issues affecting humans everywhere. I got in touch with her and she agreed to do th...

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...

Looking at the search engine terms people use to find my blog Moments in Literature , I can see that a lot of searches feature the phrase "famous characters in literature". We know them: Ishmael, Ahab (in Melville), the Old Man in Charles Mungoshi, Benjie, Quentin, Caddie (in William Faulkner), Tambudzai in Tsitsi Dangarembga, and many others. Last year I attempted a Google Knol on Famous Characters in African Literature and even began discussing Tambudzai, but then I got too busy and shelved the idea. If search engine terms show that there are people looking for famous characters in literature, there is an opportunities for bloggers! Just take one character at a time and cast him or her as a famous character in literature, some type of mini-biographies for the characters in the literature we love.

Memory Chirere . The next issue of Munyori Literary Journal will feature an essay by Memory Chirere on the state of the short story in Southern Africa. An award-winning short story writer himself, Chirere has often argued: "Nearly every Southern African writer who has become prominent today started with short-stories or has a short story collection somewhere along the way. Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger, Charles Mungoshi’s Coming of the Dry Season, Njabulo Ndehbele’s Fools and Other Stories, Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Corner B, Alan Paton’s Debbie Go Home and many others are short stories books. Even the so called novels from Southern African tend to be merely long short stories sometimes called novellas. One only has to see the very thin volumes of ‘novels’ like Gordimer’s July’s People and Laguma’s In The Fog of The Season’s End . The short-story is “the genre of Southern Africa” and the reasons for this are yet to be properly established."

StoryTime , an African new fiction magazine has been granted funding by the UK Arts Council to publish it's first anthology with The Lion Press Ltd . The writers' deadline is July 20, 2009 and the anthology will go to print in early August. The ST Anthology will be launched by The Lion Press at a Zimbabwean Writers festival being organised by them in August. Participation is by the writers already at ST and those who will publish work on the website by July 20. These works must fit the anthology's guidelines in order to be selected. The book is designed to be an eclectic anthology and will only feature the best of all the works at ST. The book is entitled "African Roar: An Eclectic Anthology of African Authors". Anthology Guidelines: Submit short stories between 1500-8000 words. All fiction genres and themes are acceptable, and must fit within the general ST guidelines No children's stories. Only writers born in Africa, or currently domiciled in for over 10 ye...