The Miles Morland Foundation has just announced the winners of Morland Writing Scholarships for 2015. The winners each receive a grant of ₤18,000 to allow them to take a year to write a book. This year for the first time there are two non-fiction awards of £27,000 to be paid over a year and a […]
Year: 2015
Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah will be joining the judging panel of the 2016 Man Booker Prize jury that was announced yesterday. Born in Zanzibar, Gurnah’s novel, Paradise was shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 1994 while By the Sea was longlisted in 2001 so he will probably have a clue as to this whole Booker […]
Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Penny Busetto and Rehana Rossouw are the three shortlisted authors for the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2015. The shortlisted writers will be rewarded with a sponsored multi-city book tour and will also have 1,000 copies of their books purchased by Etisalat for distribution to schools, libraries and book clubs across the Continent. […]
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Omenana seeks your contributions
Omenana, a tri-monthly speculative fiction e-magazine, is open to submissions from writers from Africa and the African Diaspora. Stories and art must be speculative fiction (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror or Magical Realism) and must involve characters, settings or themes directly related to the African continent. Stories and art should challenge normative ideas about gender, sexuality, ethnicity […]
Song of Lawino is an epic poem written by Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek published in 1966 in Luo and translated into many other languages, including English. In the poem Lawino’s husband, Ocol, the son of the tribal leader of their Acoli tribe, has taken another wife, Clementine, who is educated and acts European. Although Ocol’s […]
Happiness is a Four Letter Word is the debut novel of South African novelist Cynthia Jele. The book came out in 2010 and won a raft of awards in South Africa and abroad. One of the awards the book won was the MNET literary award in 2011 which meant that the book would be commissioned […]
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye was born in Southampton, England and moved to Kenya in 1954 to run the CMS bookshop at Church House in Nairobi. Since landing on these shores the Brit integrated into Kenyan life marrying D.G.W. Macgoye, a medical doctor in 1960. Whilst doing her job at the CMS bookshop she organised readings which […]
The Artists In Residency (AIR) programme has provided artists across discipline (visual arts; literary arts; performing arts; music & film) with the opportunity to participate in residency programmes throughout the world. This year AIR received a record 423 complete applications across genres from 40 countries across the continent. After a rigorous selection process that invited […]
Alfred Msadala, a poet, short story writer and critic from Malawi, launched War Drums Are Beating; discourses off the anthill at the Blantyre Sports Club in the nations capital on Thursday evening. Msadala is the President of the Book Publishers Association of Malawi as well as the chair of the Board of Trustees of Blantyre […]
#naija4binyavanga thanks @lolashoneyin thanks @tonikan11 #getwellsoon #binyavangawainana A photo posted by Victor Ehikhamenor (@victorsozaboy) on Nov 28, 2015 at 9:33am PST The Freedom Park in Lagos, Nigeria was the venue that Nigerian writers celebrated Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina on Saturday afternoon. Binyavanga “Binj” Wainaina the Kenyan writer loved by many is very unwell and […]
Binyavanga Wainaina. This is a name synonymous with some of the best that has come out of Kenya in the last twenty years. He emerged when he won the Caine Prize for African writing in 2002. Some would have taken the money and moved to a bigger apartment and lived off his fame until further […]
The fasted growing literary festival in Zimbabwe, LitFest Harare is set to run in Harare from 26 – 28 November 2015. The second in the series, there will be a series of activities running at the University of Zimbabwe, SAPES Trust, Theatre in the Park, the British Council and at Gallery Delta in Harare. It […]
The Lagos Books and Arts Festival was hosted primarily at the Freedom Park in Lagos from 13th to 15th November. It was an explosion of arts at the park in Victoria Island with exhibitions, panel discussions, book chats, concerts, poetry presentations and a whole lot more. Here are five videos from some of the participants […]
The theme at the Ake Festival 2015 this year was Engaging The Fringe. This meant that there were events that focused on genres and creative endeavor that are not regarded as ‘mainstream’ in spite of their growing popularity and availability. There were panels all through the festival but Friday had some of the most poignant […]
The Miles Morland Foundation has just announced the shortlist for the 2015 Morland Writing Scholarships. These applicants will be whittled down to four on December 14th by the judges Ellah Allfrey who is chair, Olufemi Terry and Muthoni Garland and announced shortly after. The list features a healthy list of twenty one applicants with seven […]
