“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 ]
Paisley will host its first ever book festival in February 2020, honouring the "brilliant political thinkers and creatives that have long been associated with the area", say organisers. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-22 11:53:08 UTC ]
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The first novel I published with a major house was about a murder I covered as a reporter when I was in my early twenties. The victim, who was my age, and lived in my neighborhood, disappeared in the winter and her body was found in the summer in a shallow grave in the woods […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:49 UTC ]
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On this warm October day in Southern California, I walk the Venice canals and think of Kate Braverman. How in her sensational first novel Lithium for Medea she captured a Venice so distant that it’s difficult to accept that this version, which is polished and expensive and filled with tourists,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:36 UTC ]
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Jokha Alharthi’s inventive multigenerational tale, “Celestial Bodies,” is also the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-21 15:10:57 UTC ]
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LOOK, IT MUST be said: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments is a deeply strange text. A page-turning potboiler set 15 years after the events of the first novel and published over three decades later, and co-winner this week of the 2019 Booker Prize, it tells a story only barely connected to the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-19 15:00:57 UTC ]
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A novel featuring a 110-year-old character has won the £20,000 Daily Mail and Penguin Random House First Novel Competition, now in its fourth year. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-18 05:17:36 UTC ]
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LARB presents this exclusive excerpt from Graffiti, the inaugural anthology from artist collective POC United, published this week by Aunt Lute Books. ¤ WHERE ARE YOUR WORDS welcome? Where do you have permission to scribble, scrawl, romanticize, speculate, brag, retaliate, and narrate your own... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-16 17:00:52 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury has acquired Irish children's laureate Sarah Crossan's first novel for adults in a six-figure deal at auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-16 04:39:48 UTC ]
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When DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Hewlett-Packard and eBay CEO Meg Whitman announced the idea for Quibi last year, there was debate over whether millennials and Gen Zers would cash in on a mobile-only platform streaming shows lasting for 10 minutes or less. One thing is for... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-11 22:09:18 UTC ]
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We had a new monster every night. I had this book I loved, Bring on the Bad Guys. It was a big, chunky paperback collection of comic-book stories, and as you might guess from the title, it wasn’t much concerned with heroes. It was instead an anthology of tales about the worst of the worst, […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-10 08:49:26 UTC ]
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Debut author Chikọdili Emelumadu has won the £3,000 Curtis Brown First Novel Prize. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-10 07:07:47 UTC ]
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Translating one medium into another is tricky. Music is music and art is art and dance is dance; to try to convey the power of another art in fiction is its own sleight-of-hand. My own first novel takes on that challenge. In A Song For A New Day, musician Luce Cannon was on the cusp […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-07 11:00:15 UTC ]
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CHERRÍE MORAGA HAS been an iconic figure in queer and Latinx literature since the 1981 publication of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, an anthology she edited with the late Gloria Anzaldúa. Bridge was among the first explorations of how people and communities with... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-04 17:00:25 UTC ]
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When I spoke with Linnea Hartsuyker back in 2017, her epic saga was just beginning. The first novel opens with her hero, Ragnvald, seeing a vision of a golden wolf who will unite the feuding kingdoms of Norway under one rule. The vision sets the course of Ragnvald’s life, bringing him into the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-04 08:47:45 UTC ]
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Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow is a thought-provoking excursion into the futures we would and would not want to live in. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2019-10-02 16:18:40 UTC ]
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Lit Lists T. Patrick Ortez Fantasy is often overlooked when it comes to literature in translation, but from Gilgamesh to the Edda to The Epic of Darkness, fantasy lies at the heart of human storytelling. The genre has changed a lot since then, but fantasy... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-10-01 14:00:27 UTC ]
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No matter how the House of Representatives' inquiry into President Trump plays out, FX hopes that "impeachment" is still a big buzzword exactly one year from today. That's when the third season of American Crime Story--titled, that's right, Impeachment--is set to debut. But Season 3 of Ryan... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2019-09-27 10:30:50 UTC ]
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Man Booker-winning author Anne Enright’s next novel, Actress, about sexual power and celebrity, will be published by Jonathan Cape in February 2020. Jonathan Cape publisher Robin Robertson acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Peter Straus of Rogers, Coleridge & White... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-27 08:38:57 UTC ]
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Nick Hornby’s first novel in five years, Just Like You, will be published by Viking. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-27 01:29:37 UTC ]
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The Center for Fiction named its 2019 First Novel Prize shortlist this morning. The post Center for Fiction Names 2019 First Novel Prize Shortlist appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2019-09-26 17:53:27 UTC ]
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