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the tanjara (Free subscription) | 06/11/2009
Tenth birthday tour of the Caine Prize for African Writing gets on the road by Susannah Tarbush Saudi Gazette, 2 November 2009 All too often Africa only receives coverage in the Western media when bemoaning issues of violence, disease, famine or corruption. But in the cultural field there is better news, and African literature is attracting growing international attention. An important engine of the...
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Ample Sanity (Free subscription) | 29/10/2009
"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering." Ben Okri And Sadly This is True . Rodriguez at the Detroit Institute of Arts . Hello, my name is John and I ride a bicycle . Room to twirl and play plus a clock tower? I'm so there. I wish. Wants & Desires | BDDW Stone Barns . Pick the apps...
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Bernardine Evaristo's Blog (Free subscription) | 01/10/2009
‘Over the past ten years, the Caine Prize has done a great deal to foster writing in Africa and bring exciting new African writers to the attention of wider audiences.’ JM Coetzee. This tour of exciting new writers from Africa will launch next Saturday. Chaired by novelist Aminatta Forna with an introduction by Ben Okri, the four [...]
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Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | 01/10/2009
From Publishing Perspectives: Young Publishers to Unite at Frankfurt By Jon Slack At Frankfurt Book Fair this year I will be heading up a major initiative to establish an International Society of Young Publishers.The idea stems from a UK-based non-profit group called The Society of Young Publishers (SYP), for which I've volunteered for three years now. We run speaker meetings, conferences and other...
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3pieceonline blogspot (Free subscription) | 08/09/2009
image of j at 5 yrs old“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream...
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New Zealand Herald (Free subscription) | 21/08/2009
Paul Marsh, literary agent. Died aged 57. International literary agent Paul Marsh was celebrated for selling British and international authors around the world and ensuring they were published in many languages. His agency...
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Frassy (Free subscription) | 18/08/2009
(hello...frassy bling) "We began with words, and we will end beyond them. It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said and meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words. If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical...
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A Potter's Way (Free subscription) | 17/08/2009
"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry. In that land of beginnings, spirits mingled with the unborn." (Ben Okri, The Famished Road) Freedom, I think, extends in all directions. I look beyond the incredible and the unknown, and there it is. Through barriers and prohibitions,...
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Seagull (Free subscription) | 14/08/2009
----- excerpt from Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri ----- And as he breathed deeply the changing colours of the air, he noticed that the glow that was his guide seemed to be floating. "What is the first law of this place?" he asked his floating guide. "The first law of our city", the guide said, with that almost ironic smile in the voice. "is that what you think is what becomes...
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Fluttering Butterflies (Free subscription) | 13/08/2009
I'm absolutely swimming in new books lately. So many recent acquisitions, I really just don't know which book to start reading first. I always find it fascinating to hear how people choose their next book. Some people have very set ideas of what they'd like to accomplish in a month, others swan about between genres and styles. I usually pick up books hoping for a particular emotional response from...
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The "top" Top Five (Free subscription) | 08/08/2009
According to the Times the best books Of the last 60 years: 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell 1950 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1951 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1952 Pigs Have Wings P. G. Wodehouse 1953 Casino Royale Ian Fleming 1954 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1955 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1956 The Hundred and One Dalmatians Dodie Smith 1957 Doctor Zhivago...
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WanderingScribe (Free subscription) | 14/07/2009
Psalm 91 for my sins, and this for my pleasure. I wish I had written it... To An English Friend In Africa — Ben Okri Be grateful for the freedom to see other dreams. Bless your loneliness as much as you drank of your former companionships. All that you are experiencing now, will become moods of future joys. So bless it all. Do not think your way superior to another's. Do not venture to judge,...
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Cognitive diary (Free subscription) | 05/07/2009
A response to the criteria at The Penguin Prize for African Writing http://www.penguinbooks.co .za/african-winners/index. php Worthy initiative but I wonder what the logic of the following criteria is: Rules for the fiction prize 1.Submissions in the children’s literature, science fiction or fantasy genres will not be considered MY RESPONSE Why? I am really puzzled by this. The iconic work of...
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Am I Scary for You? Minstrelsy, Metamorphosis and... (Free subscription) | 28/06/2009
Have mostly enjoyed reading the opinion pieces about MJ in the tabloids and the broadsheets but have been angered by some of the ignorance and the elemental mistakes. One TV reporter kept calling Katherine Jackson "Kathleen", over and over again, which was a bit of an insult to a woman who has been in the public eye for 45 years or so. Even worse the Daily Telegraph's obituary said Jackson...
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Splat! (Free subscription) | 19/06/2009
Here’s an excellent piece from Paul Schrader, the writer of such classics as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Basically, he’s asking what…
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