New Series for Wealth of Ideas (WOI)
My colleague, Maureen Moore, an avid reader, gave me her list of books she read in 2010, and I said, wow, what a great idea, so great that it inspired me to think of a series of post for this blog. Starting with Maureen Moore, I am going to publish information about what different people (that means you, dear readers) have read in a---, I want to say a year, but I don't want to limit it to only that, perhaps just what everyone is reading, because, dare I say, we are always reading.
I want to commit to posting something about reading every week, perhaps on Fridays. I publish your list of the books you have read in a specified time, and ask you a few questions about your reading. This is an opportunity for you to share what you liked or disliked about those books, and a great opportunity for us to plan to read some of the books on your list, to start buying them, etc. Notice I say, "plan to read"; sometimes we don't get to read all the books worth reading (which really means all books) at any given time, but the plannning is essentially; often, we eventually get to it. Watch this space for more for Maureen's list.
In the meantime, go to the WIN-ZIMBABWE blog to meet a writer whose energy I admire.
I worked with Virginia Phiri in the 90s, when we both were advocates of writing, I with the Budding Writers of Zimbabwe, she with Zimbabwe Women Writers; our office were in the same building, New Book House. I haven't seen her in over 15 years, but I see she has continued doing her work.
In other news, Voice of Witness, the nonprofit division of McSweeney's Books founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen,is going to launch HOPE DEFERRED: NARRATIVES OF ZIMBABWEAN LIVES, edited by Peter Orner and Annie Holmes, with a foreword by Brian Chikwava, author of Harare North. This looks like an interesting book. I have read short stories by one of the editor, Annie Holmes, and I liked them. The concept of the book, having different people tell their stories, although not a unique or new idea, sounds appealing becauase for it's like reading unique accounts of the familiar...Yet for most American readers such a book will be their first encounter with stories about the Zimbabwean situation, told by those who experienced what they experienced.
The editors say: "We ask the people who know this complicated story best – the Zimbabwean people who have endured (and hoped) across the decades to tell their side of this story. In their own words, they recount their experiences of losing their homes, land, livelihoods and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at home or beaten up or raped to ‘punish’ votes for the opposition. Those living abroad in exile or forced to flee to neighboring countries recount their escapes, of cutting through fences, swimming across crocodile-infested rivers and entrusting themselves to human smugglers. This book includes Zimbabweans of every age, class and political conviction, from farm laborers to academics, from artists and opposition leaders to ordinary Zimbabweans: men and women simply trying to survive as a once thriving nation heads for collapse."
ABOUT THE EDITORS:
Peter Orner is the author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a novel set in Namibia and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and Esther Stories, Finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award. Orner is also a lawyer and the editor of Underground America, an oral history of undocumented people living in the U.S. published by Voice of Witness. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Orner is an associate professor at San Francisco State University.
Born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe, Annie Holmes is a documentary filmmaker who has worked in television and film for many years. She has also published short fiction , both in the U.S. and Africa, as well as a memoir about Zimbabwean independence entitled Good Red. Holmes worked as an associate editor of Underground America and currently directs communications for an international feminist network.
Foreword writerBrian Chikwava is a London based Zimbabwean writer and author of the novel Harare North, which won won the Outstanding First Creative Published Work category in Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Awards and was also longed listed for the George Orwell Prize. The novel will be published in the U.S. by Random House in June, 2011. He is a previous winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and a former Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Chikwava is currently working on his second novel.
I want to commit to posting something about reading every week, perhaps on Fridays. I publish your list of the books you have read in a specified time, and ask you a few questions about your reading. This is an opportunity for you to share what you liked or disliked about those books, and a great opportunity for us to plan to read some of the books on your list, to start buying them, etc. Notice I say, "plan to read"; sometimes we don't get to read all the books worth reading (which really means all books) at any given time, but the plannning is essentially; often, we eventually get to it. Watch this space for more for Maureen's list.
In the meantime, go to the WIN-ZIMBABWE blog to meet a writer whose energy I admire.
I worked with Virginia Phiri in the 90s, when we both were advocates of writing, I with the Budding Writers of Zimbabwe, she with Zimbabwe Women Writers; our office were in the same building, New Book House. I haven't seen her in over 15 years, but I see she has continued doing her work.
In other news, Voice of Witness, the nonprofit division of McSweeney's Books founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen,is going to launch HOPE DEFERRED: NARRATIVES OF ZIMBABWEAN LIVES, edited by Peter Orner and Annie Holmes, with a foreword by Brian Chikwava, author of Harare North. This looks like an interesting book. I have read short stories by one of the editor, Annie Holmes, and I liked them. The concept of the book, having different people tell their stories, although not a unique or new idea, sounds appealing becauase for it's like reading unique accounts of the familiar...Yet for most American readers such a book will be their first encounter with stories about the Zimbabwean situation, told by those who experienced what they experienced.
The editors say: "We ask the people who know this complicated story best – the Zimbabwean people who have endured (and hoped) across the decades to tell their side of this story. In their own words, they recount their experiences of losing their homes, land, livelihoods and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at home or beaten up or raped to ‘punish’ votes for the opposition. Those living abroad in exile or forced to flee to neighboring countries recount their escapes, of cutting through fences, swimming across crocodile-infested rivers and entrusting themselves to human smugglers. This book includes Zimbabweans of every age, class and political conviction, from farm laborers to academics, from artists and opposition leaders to ordinary Zimbabweans: men and women simply trying to survive as a once thriving nation heads for collapse."ABOUT THE EDITORS:
Peter Orner is the author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a novel set in Namibia and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and Esther Stories, Finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award. Orner is also a lawyer and the editor of Underground America, an oral history of undocumented people living in the U.S. published by Voice of Witness. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Orner is an associate professor at San Francisco State University.
Born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe, Annie Holmes is a documentary filmmaker who has worked in television and film for many years. She has also published short fiction , both in the U.S. and Africa, as well as a memoir about Zimbabwean independence entitled Good Red. Holmes worked as an associate editor of Underground America and currently directs communications for an international feminist network.
Foreword writerBrian Chikwava is a London based Zimbabwean writer and author of the novel Harare North, which won won the Outstanding First Creative Published Work category in Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Awards and was also longed listed for the George Orwell Prize. The novel will be published in the U.S. by Random House in June, 2011. He is a previous winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and a former Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Chikwava is currently working on his second novel.
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