“Through Multiculturalism We Become Better Humans”: A Conversation with Vonani Bila, by Ming Di Interviews [email protected] Thu, 06/13/2024 - 15:21 Vonani Bila with his mother and his son. Courtesy of Mark Waller, 2010.Vonani Bila (b. 1972) grew up in Shirley Village, Limpopo province, South Africa, from where he used to walk fourteen kilometers daily to Lemana High School in Elim. He is a poet, essayist, cultural activist, founding editor of the poetry journal Timbila, publisher of Timbila Books, curator of the Vhembe International Poetry festival, and founder of Timbila Writers’ Village, a rural retreat center for writers. He has been instrumental in promoting marginalized poets and has become an iconic figure among the poets of his generation in South Africa. His poetry continues the tradition of South African resistance poetry of the 1970s and 1980s, blended with postmodernist experiments. He is the author of eight storybooks in English, Northern Sotho, and Xitsonga for newly literate adult readers; two children’s books; co-compiler of a Xitsonga monolingual dictionary with M. M. Marhanele, Tihlùngù ta Rixaka (2016); and is currently a lecturer in English at the University of Limpopo. He holds an MFA in creative writing (cum laude) from Rhodes University and is currently a PhD candidate (creative writing) at Wits University. His poetry books include No Free Sleeping (1998) (with Donald Parenzee and Alan Finlay); In the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-06-13 20:21:36 UTC ]
Jonathan Franzen is set to return in the US next year with Crossroads, the first novel in a new trilogy from the author. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-16 09:26:52 UTC ]
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It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . that the CW is developing an anthology series inspired by Jane Austen’s works! The series, titled Modern Austen, will tackle a different Jane Austen novel each season and reimagine it as six modern stories. Modern Austen’s first season will set Pride... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-13 16:26:19 UTC ]
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“African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song,” edited by Kevin Young, contains an overwhelming amount of variety and history. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-11-10 20:51:39 UTC ]
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2020 WORKED HARD to be one of the worst years in recent memory, but for readers of Native American literature, this era is proving to be among the most exciting in the history of Indigenous writing, especially for poetry. To wit: Joy Harjo has just begun her second term as poet laureate of the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-11-09 18:00:17 UTC ]
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Anthology, based in Boca Raton, partners with over 2,000 colleges across 30 countries. Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2020-11-09 17:38:19 UTC ]
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John Murray is publishing a new novel from Susan Beale, whose debut novel The Good Guy was shortlisted for 2016's Costa First Novel Award. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-05 19:51:11 UTC ]
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A digital Irish children's book festival is launching later this month, in association with Dublin's Pavilion Theatre. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-04 03:24:57 UTC ]
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“We have taken a path of improvisation and experimentation.” How the literary world reinvented the book festival in real time. | Lit Hub “To be forever alone in your own kingdom seems a unique kind of heartbreak.” LA’s resident mountain lion is a lonely hunter. | Lit Hub Nature The age of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-03 11:30:17 UTC ]
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As the literary world moved online in 2020, a central question for many organizations was how to manage the annual festivals that gather thousands of readers from around the world. Here, the directors of five festivals—Sara Ortiz of the Believer Festival, Lissette Mendez of the Miami Book Fair,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-03 09:57:24 UTC ]
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In her first novel published in 14 years, author Julia Alvarez explores grief, isolation, and sisterhood. Afterlife follows Antonia, a writer and retiring English professor, who has just lost her husband Sam. As she reimagines what her life will be without her husband, Antonia also struggles... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-11-02 12:00:33 UTC ]
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I DON’T KNOW when I first became aware of Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s writing, but it was probably sometime between 1980, when Raymond Carver lauded her on the basis of her National Book Award–nominated first novel Rough Strife, and 1989, when Sven Birkerts raved about Schwartz’s PEN/Faulkner... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-29 15:00:49 UTC ]
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In one of my earliest memories I am standing on a beach with my father and we are sculpting the shape of a woman’s body out of sand. In my mind it is winter—Avalon in the off-season—and I see us huddled in coats, wrapped in wool, bracing ourselves against the salt wind that blows in […] The post... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-29 08:50:18 UTC ]
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Interviews Ari Larissa Heinrich / Photo by Tara Pixley Ari Larissa Heinrich is the translator of Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre (New York Review Books) and Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes (forthcoming from Columbia University Press). They... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-10-27 22:09:23 UTC ]
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This one goes out to all the writers in the Year of our Lord 2020, as we all worry that our total inability to put a sentence together could turn into a lifetime of non-production: It’s never too late. Wole Soyinka, who in 1986 became the first person from sub-Saharan Africa to win a Nobel... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-27 19:39:22 UTC ]
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ON JULY 2 of this year, I interviewed the author Nadia Terranova at her mother’s house in Santa Marinella, Italy, on a Zoom call from my apartment in Santa Monica, California. Back in 2015, I’d written a review of her first novel Gli anni al contrario (The Years in Reverse) and we’d met for... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-27 17:00:01 UTC ]
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THE DEVELOPERS OF Beirut’s Eden Bay needed to clean up the raw sewage on the beach of their luxury development, so they rerouted it into a storm pipe. “And then the rains came,” writes Lina Mounzer in her darkly comedic account from the new anthology Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-25 12:30:52 UTC ]
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The seventh Aké Arts and Book Festival in Lagos is all online and available for all to see. Events are free and open to the public. The post Nigeria’s Digital Aké Arts and Book Festival Opens Today appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-10-22 19:32:42 UTC ]
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Interviews Photo by Beowulf Sheehan / Courtesy of www.tayarijones.com Tayari Jones is a New York Times best-selling author from Atlanta, Georgia. Her most recent novel, An American Marriage, won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Jones has been... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-10-22 14:14:35 UTC ]
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In her 20s, she set up her own company, publishing everyone from James Ellroy to the Worst Witch series, and changing Britain for the better, book by book There is a revealing story Margaret Busby tells, about the first novel she published. A family friend had bumped into a former US serviceman... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-10-22 05:00:17 UTC ]
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In mid-March, as the British government dragged its feet on implementing strict coronavirus lockdown measures that it would soon impose anyway, Patrick Vallance, the country’s chief scientific adviser, gave a series of interviews and discussed a concept with which many people were not then... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-10-21 12:30:20 UTC ]
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