Archive for the ‘Short Stories’ Category
March 17th, 2010 by Tracey
Ringing laughter is what most guests will remember from the launch of Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them. Visiting South Africa for the Time of the Writer Festival, Akpan was able to make time for his Joburg fans at the Nelson Mandela Square Exclusive Books this week. Akpan, a Catholic priest, delighted launch guests with his self-deprecating attitude and genuine warmth.
Say You’re One of Them is, of course, the collection of short stories that caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who made it one of her Book Club selections. Akpan says the resulting attention has allowed him to travel around the world – mostly through writers’ festivals invites. He speaks of writing as a “gift” – something that he needed to appreciate by acting on. When writing his book, he was often at the mercy of Nigeria’s on again, off again electricity supply, but he persevered. He wrote mainly at night on local computers while attending to his seminary studies and parishioners during the day. Asked for advice by an aspiring author in the audience, he said, “If you want to write, write!”. He said that a writer must be “ready to sit alone in that room, tell their friends not to visit and stay in that space”. Saying he “stumbled” upon his gift, he spent many years developing it including going to a writers’ school.
During the launch he said he’d originally aspired to be a columnist, writing a package of 4 opinion pieces which he sent off to various newspapers to try his luck. Feeling down and depressed when he didn’t receive a positive response, he eventually tried fiction – asking himself, “What do I have to lose?”. He was lucky, with several publishers keen to pick up his work. As a newly developing author he shared how he balked initially at being published because he didn’t feel he was ready. Finally, a year later, his short story, “My Parents’ Bedroom”, was published.
Asked how real the stories he writes are to him he replied that first he writes, then he researches. For him, “research is not the story”. But he does spend time sending his work out for comments and feedback, particularly when it comes to checking cultural details and honouring the local dialogue or “patois”. It is clear that although not biographical, the stories and children he writes about move him greatly. “I intentionally wanted to write about things that bothered me,” he said. For the future, he would love to write a novel but that is something he will need to learn how to do.
It was clear that the crowd at this launch – which comprised people from all over the world, as it happened – were only too happy to enjoy a touch of the Oprah magic that now surrounds Father Uwem Akpan.
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March 9th, 2010 by Tracey
Exclusive Books and Penguin Books take pleasure in inviting you to come and meet Uwem Akpan.
His book of short stories, Say You’re One of Them, is Oprah Winfreys’ latest book club selection and the winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Africa region.
Akpan’s extraordinary stories centre on African conflicts as seen through the eyes of children and describes their resilience and endurance in heartbreaking detail. From child trafficking to inter-religious conflicts, the author reveals in beautiful prose the resilience and endurance of children faced with the harsh consequences of deprivation and terror.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Event Details
- Date: Tuesday, 16 March 2010
- Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
- Venue: Exclusive Books, Mandela Square, Shop 111, Upper Level
Mandela Square
Sandton, Johannesburg | Map - RSVP: thesquare@exclusivebooks.co.za, 011 784 5416
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March 4th, 2010 by Tracey
“…usually short stories leave you wanting something and you’re like, huh, what happened?… “This is a first for me because
each one of these five stories really just left me gasping. Just an incredible book.”
– Oprah Winfrey
2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winner and Oprah Book Club author Uwem Akpan will be visiting South Africa this month, giving press interviews and attending the Time of the Writer in Durban.
If you’re in Durban from 9 – 13 March, don’t miss your chance to get to know a stunning new voice on the African writing scene.
About the book
Uwem Akpan’s stunning stories humanise the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they’ve ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of “An Ex-Mas Feast” needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can’t be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
In the second of his stories, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences of life for children in Africa.
Akpan’s voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.
About the author
Uwem Akpan was born in the village of Ikot Akpan Eda in southern Nigeria. After studying philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, he studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of East Africa. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. “My Parents’ Bedroom”, a story included in this, his first collection, was one of five short stories by African writers chosen as finalists for the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2007 Akpan began a teaching assignment at a Jesuit college in Harare, Zimbabwe.
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Photo courtesy Luke Coppen @ Wordpress
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December 10th, 2009 by Tracey
The Paris Review has made available its classic 1994 interview with Chinua Achebe on the art of fiction, which was conducted by Jerome Brooks. Achebe’s two latest books are Girls at War and The Education of a British-Protected Child.
I don’t lay down the law for anybody else. But I think writers are not only writers, they are also citizens. They are generally adults. My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity. To make humanity uncomfortable, yes. But intrinsically to be against humanity, that I don’t take. This is why I find racism impossible, because this is against humanity. Some people think, Well, what he’s saying is we must praise his people. For God’s sake! Go and read my books. I don’t praise my people. I am their greatest critic.
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Image courtesy Angela Radulescu
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November 11th, 2009 by Tracey
Oprah Winfrey, Facebook and the websites Oprah.com and CNN.com introduced Nigerian author Uwem Akpan to the world last night, as Oprah interviewed him on his book of short stories – and her latest book club selection – Say You’re One of Them.
The event, a live webcast, took place in the wee hours of the South African night – but if you missed it, you can watch the show as it unfolded at Oprah.com. CNN’s Anderson Cooper joined the conversation, as well as fellow book club members from around the world.
Oprah has also posted several readings from the book online. Here’s more from Say You’re One of Them and Oprah.com:
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Photo courtesy Oprah’s Book Club
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October 26th, 2009 by Tracey
Oprah.com is joining forces with CNN.com and Facebook to present a LIVE Oprah’s Book Club interactive web event on Monday, November 9, 2009 at 9:00 pm Eastern Standard Time in the USA (that’s 4am on Nov 10th in South Africa) with author Uwem Akpan!
The webcast will be a 90-minute worldwide event, during which readers can submit their questions for the author and potentially be featured during the live discussion.
The special online event will be streamed live simultaneously from CNN.com’s video player on Oprah.com and CNN.com and will utilize Facebook Connect, enabling users to comment through their Facebook profiles without ever leaving the live webcast.
As the biggest book club in the world, Oprah’s Book Club has nearly 2 million online members. Enrollment is free and provides members with access to benefits such as online discussion groups and reading questions.
To join Oprah’s Book Club or to register for this web event, log on to oprah.com/bookclubevent.
Additionally, CNN will tap into iReport, CNN’s user-generated news community, and encourage online users who have already read the book to share their comments about what moved them through video or photo submissions. The iReport submissions, along with questions or comments submitted via Oprah.com and Facebook, may be incorporated into the live online event.
The iReport submissions, along with questions or comments submitted via Oprah.com and Facebook, may be incorporated into the live online event.
Don’t miss it!
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October 22nd, 2009 by Tracey
Johanensburg-based Veronique Tadjo, originally from the Ivory Coast, brings the world of Francophone African letters into her writing.
Her novel As the Crow Flies has been published as part of the new Penguin African Writers Series. It weaves together a rich tapestry of voices to tell stories of parting and return, suffering, healing and desire in a lyrical and moving exploration of the human heart.
In this Maureen Isaacson feature from the Sunday Independent, Tadjo speculates about where her novel might be situated, in the grand run of the “new roman” from Alain Robbe-Grillet’s 1950s experiments until now:
Necklace of beaded messages
Veronique Tadjo, the author of As the Crow Flies, is head of French at the School of Literature and Language Studies at Wits University. Born in Paris, she was raised and educated in Cote d’Ivoire.
Among her publications are novels, poetry collections and children’s books. As the Crow Flies, originally A Vol d’Oiseau, was translated from the French by Wangui wa Goro, a Kenyan writer and translator in 2001.
Tadjo says in an interview that this was her first book of stories. A first edition of The Flight of the Crow was published in the Heinemann Africa Writer’s Series.
The author “would have loved to write one of those serene stories with a beginning and an end. But… lives mingle, people tame one another and part. Destinies are lost.”
This is her message in a preface to the reader. Tadjo says that her work is “not experimental”. She describes her book as “a necklace. Each story is a bead. It requires a second reading, a thread that goes through all the stories – I think this thread is love.”
She begins with a poem: “If you want to love/Do so/To the ends of the earth/With no shortcuts/Do so/ As the crow flies.”
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October 19th, 2009 by Tracey
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September 29th, 2009 by Tracey
The news that Oprah Winfrey has chosen Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them as the 63rd title for her incredibly popular book club has people who love African literature celebrating around the world.
On a new video just posted to her book club page, in which she talks about “An Ex-Mas Feast,” the first story in Akpan’s book, an enthusiastic Oprah tells what drew her into the writer’s storylines.
“I’ve interviewed a lot of prostitutes over the years,” says Oprah in an arresting moment. “But I’ve never thought of prostitutes having a family.”
Click this image to watch Oprah discuss “An Ex-Mas Feast” at Oprah.com:
You can also watch Oprah announce Say You’re One of Them as her latest book club pick:
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Photo courtesy Granta
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September 1st, 2009 by Tracey
The Penguin African Writers series, launched in 2009, showcases writing from a diverse range of writers from Africa for contemporary readers in Africa and the rest of the world. The series launched with works from Chinua Achebe, Dambudzo Marechera, Véronique Tadjo, Lília Momplé, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Karen King-Aribisala.
In 2010 we will be expanding the series and this is a call for submissions for artwork to be used on the covers of these forthcoming titles. It is a wonderful opportunity for both established and new artists, with assured international exposure and the support of the Penguin Group.
Every book in the Penguin African Writers series is distinctly African and the illustrations should reflect a theme central to Africa. We are looking for creative representations of “African”, contemporary and/or traditional. The artwork’s connection to the title and content of the book does not necessarily have to be literal as the messages and themes are open to interpretation.
A detailed brief will be available from 7 September 2009. Artists who would like to submit artwork for possible inclusion in one of the upcoming Penguin African Writers books should contact Reneé Naudé at renee.naude@za.penguingroup.com for more information.
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