Interviews Matthew Davis Ugandan novelist and short-story writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. She was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Short-Story Prize for her story Lets Tell This Story Properly, published by Granta, and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2018 to support her writing. Her first full story collection, Manchester Happened, was published by Oneworld in May 2019. Retitled Let’s Tell This Story Properly, the collection was published in the US in July 2019. She lives in Manchester with her husband and son and lectures in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. While Makumbi was a fellow at the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University this past spring, she talked with Matthew Davis, the center’s founding director. Here they discuss how westerners and Africans read African literature differently, writing for Ugandans, and how eighteen years in England has changed her. Matthew Davis: Jennifer, welcome. I want to start by discussing your novel, Kintu, which is in many ways a modern classic of world literature. It begins in 1750, when Kintu Kidda sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda kingdom. The novel follows the descendants of Kintu as they struggle with a curse he unleashed as he made his way to the capital in the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-06 13:42:31 UTC ]
Here are five 2025 mystery releases to have on your radar, from middle grade dark academia to short stories with sleuthing Jesuit priests. Continue reading at Book Riot
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Language of White Bones: The Secrets of Han Kang’s Poetic Prose, by Eun-Gwi Chung Essay [email protected] Thu, 12/05/2024 - 15:23 Photo of Han Kang by Paik Dahuim / Courtesy of Natur & KulturLike a clutch of words strewn over white... Continue reading at World Literature Today
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Late in 1933, Dylan Thomas started writing a new short story. “The theme of the story I dreamed in a nightmare,” he wrote to a friend. “If successful, if the words fit to the thoughts, it will be one of the most ghastly short stories ever written.” Thomas was possessed, in part, by rejection.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
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In the 1990s, when I was a student at the newly formed Asian Pacific American Studies Department at NYU, the artist in residence at the time, David Henry Hwang, visited my class and spoke about Bruce Lee and the film The Joy Luck Club. He said something that I will never forget: “One... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
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Han Kang’s poetry and short stories are just as innovative and important as her novels. Continue reading at The Conversation
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Every time I read Jamie Quatro’s fiction—from her debut collection I Want to Show You More, to her 2018 novel Fire Sermon, to her short stories in the New Yorker—I experience the same edge-of-my-seat pleasure. Quatro’s characters are as alive as flesh-and-blood people; the Southern landscape... Continue reading at The Millions
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In 1993, I published my first decent story in a literary journal and a few months later received a letter from an agent whose name I recognized. I’d written short stories in college classes, sent them off, and typically the only thing that came back was a rejection, housed in the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
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Rarely have I been so moved, awed, amused, satisfied, and softly startled by a debut, but The Only Sound Is the Wind, the gorgeous new fiction collection by Pascha Sotolongo, is a deft, accomplished, utterly fearless book of short stories that seamlessly meld the mundane and the transcendent,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
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Pedro Almodóvar's first book consists of a mix of short stories and personal essays that amount to 'a fragmentary autobiography.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
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Picture a teenager in a suburban Southern California Costco, lingering by the books tables while her parents shopped. There, between the boxed vacuums and party-size clamshells of croissants, I first encountered the writing of Ha Jin. His short story, “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town,” had... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
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Comma Press has been publishing Palestinian short stories since 2008. Comma’s connection to Palestinian literature deepened however in 2014 when, shortly after bringing out the anthology, The Book of Gaza, all the writers we’d worked with on that book were subjected to 51 days of carpet bombing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
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Her novels and short stories often explored the lives of willful women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married. Continue reading at The New York Times
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The author of humorous short stories finds emotional connections in tales that engage with tech. But he’s more interested in the ties between humans. Continue reading at The New York Times
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