“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 ]
I have no idea how one goes about adapting a poetry collection into a TV series, but it looks like I’ll find out soon—AMC Studios is creating an Afrofuturistic anthology series based on Eve L. Ewing’s debut collection Electric Arches. According to Shadow and Act, “The Electric Arches anthology... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-31 17:27:27 UTC ]
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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoSince studying Lara as a student, I have been a fan of Bernardine Evaristo’s work, and am delighted to see her win the Booker Prize this year. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of twelve black characters with different backgrounds and experiences, most... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-10-30 09:49:28 UTC ]
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According to the Bookseller, Elena Ferrante’s first novel in five years will be published in English in June 2020 by Europa Editions. The Lying Life of Adults (great title? or greatest title?) is out in Italian this coming November 7, and the English version will, of course, appear in a... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-28 12:11:35 UTC ]
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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new anthology of classic horror stories Shortly after receiving my review copies of Darryl Jones’s informative and engaging history of the horror genre, Sleeping with the Lights On, the publishers, Oxford University... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2019-10-25 14:00:45 UTC ]
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Two authors from the recent Future Tense Fiction anthology discuss how they approach their craft. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2019-10-25 11:30:07 UTC ]
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Daunt Books Publishing has acquired debut novel The Coming Bad Days by poet and academic Sarah Bernstein. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-24 06:01:24 UTC ]
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In 2013, I moved to New York City alone. I had just divorced and graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop. My first novel had been released—waiting for it had been my only remaining tether to a former life. With its release, my last connection to the functional adult world was severed and I was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-23 08:48:27 UTC ]
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In her first novel to be published in the UK, Catherine Chung tells the story of a gifted mathematician whose studies take her deep into her family history. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 07:02:53 UTC ]
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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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