As the Caine Prize contenders visit the UK in advance of the announcement of the winner next week, chair of the judges Dr Peter Kimani discusses what the prize has meant to African writing Read more
More than 200 people from 40 countries attended the International Publishers Association's Africa Rising summit on June 13 and 14 in Nairobi. The event featured panel discussions and presentations on the challenges of professional publishing, both trade and educational, in Africa. Read more
Interviews and market information highlight just a few of the opportunities for African and international publishers to work together. This magazine was produced in cooperation with the International Publishers Association and its 'Africa Rising' seminar in Nairobi last week.
In a focus session on "Digital Transformation and Disruption in African Publishing" at the International Publishers Association‘s (IPA) "Africa Rising" seminar in Nairobi, hosted by the Kenya Publishers Association, two panelists will have the same last name-and almost the same face. Read more
As conversations about children's and young adult books are underway at the Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. this week, a cross-continental publishing duo has launched a cooperation to mentor African children's book authors and publish their books in the US, UK and across the African continent.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart has been translated into over 50 languages, making it the most translated African novel. But almost 60 years after it was first published, there is no authoritative translation into Igbo, Achebe's mother tongue. An equivalent instance would be if Conrad's Heart of Darkness had not been translated into Polish. But even then, the comparison would not work.
Most people would spike an idea if the business plan revealed negative numbers year after year. But Bibi Bakare-Yusuf is not most people. With precisely no entrepreneurial experience, she ignored the numbers, she says, "because I'm not a business woman" and, in 2006, launched Cassava Republic, a boutique publishing firm headquartered in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.
African literature is the object of immense international interest across both academic and popular registers. Far from the field's earlier, post-colonial association with marginality, a handful of star "Afropolitan" names are at the forefront of global trade publishing.
In 2016, an old scam began circulating on Facebook about a man who needed to collect money to rescue his cousin, a Nigerian astronaut, from space. One Dr. Bakare Tunde explained that he needed to raise $3 million to save the astronaut from a secret Soviet-era space station where he was trapped. Read more
Gersy Ifeanyi Ejimofo is founder and director of Digitalback Books. After starting her career working in tech and academic publishing (for the likes of Pearson and Macmillan) Ejimofo changed direction a few years ago, at a discussion on African writers. Read more
Do genre writers receive adequate respect from the literary establishment? ‘Everything's upside down. They assume that to do something that appeals to a huge audience is somehow easier than to do something that appeals to a tiny audience. Because we do a book a year people think you just crank a handle and out it comes.
It's funny, but if you'd asked me a few years ago (when I was 14 and had just finished the first draft of Inside Out) whether the book had anything to do with my disability, I would have given you an emphatic "No". My writing has always been a part of me, much like my disability, but for a long time I kept the two things stubbornly separate. Read more
On a cool winter's day in Cairo, I stepped into the Marriott Hotel and wandered over to the local bakery tucked away near the lavish hotel gardens. In the far corner of the small room sat Umm Kulthoum Mahfouz. We were meeting to discuss her recollections of her father, the late Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel laureate author, who still held the most recognizable name in Arabic literature. Read more
Picador has announced "with great sadness" news of the death of Clive James, who passed away peacefully at home on Sunday 24th November after a long illness, aged 80. Read more
As the decade began, there were reasons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn't cascaded into total financial collapse. Obamacare, for all its flaws, was passed, and then came the Iran deal and the Paris climate accords. Read more
Until the 2010s, if you were reading, it generally meant you weren't doing it online. Though change had been in the offing, this was the decade that irreversibly altered how we consume text - when the smartphone transformed from a marvel to a staple. Suddenly, the sharpest cultural and political analysis came in the form of a distracted boyfriend meme. Read more
Indigenous literature has been one of the top-performing categories for local booksellers in 2019, and international publishers are noticing a similar increase in interest for books written by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authors. Read more
My first love was in a band. His advice about music translated easily to the writing life-or I made it fit, those nights I was killing time backstage in dive bars during sound check. "Leave them wanting more" was his advice on playing. So I won't drone on when I give readings, erring on the side of reading too little. Read more
After 20 years of writing, my first novel, Swapping Purples for Yellows, finally entered the world in August of 2019. The book took four years to write, another two to sell, and 18 months to edit and prepare for publication. Read more
‘Everything's upside down. They assume that to do something that appeals to a huge audience is somehow easier than to do something that appeals to a tiny audience. Because we do a book a year people think you just crank a handle and out it comes. All my peers are smart, intelligent, well-informed, interested in the world; everybody puts in a huge amount of effort. It's not easy to do. Read more
Each winner gets four tickets to see the London production of WICKED at the Apollo Victoria Theatre + meet cast members after the show along with an exclusive backstage tour and £50 worth of books/eBooks tokens to spend.
The Wicked Young Writers Awards has announced that entries are open for its 10th anniversary year. Created by the producers of the musical Wicked in partnership with the National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx, the annual national writing competition is for 5 to 25-year-olds, and is intended "to reward excellence in creative writing and encourage young people to find their own voice". Read more
'Poetry is a communicative art and also one that has the capacity to disrupt through its relationship with grammar, music and form.'
‘At times of crisis or distress, it’s poems that people turn to. (Poetry) still has a power to speak to people’s feelings, maybe in a way that fiction, because it works in a longer way, can’t. There’s a little bit of your brain that mourns and grieves that you’re not writing poetry, but actually as long as I’m writing something, I’m happy.’
Do genre writers receive adequate respect from the literary establishment?
‘Everything's upside down. They assume that to do something that appeals to a huge audience is somehow easier than to do something that appeals to a tiny audience. Because we do a book a year people think you just crank a handle and out it comes. All my peers are smart, intelligent, well-informed, interested in the world; everybody puts in a huge amount of effort. It's not easy to do. Read more