News & Events, November '09

Writing

Molara Wood on Ben Okri, Lola Adesioye on Obama and Africa, Jude Dibia On Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s In Dependence and “Rex 101: A Dummies’ Guide To Rat Extermination” by Ayodele Arigbabu, in the new issue of Farafina Magazine.

Zoë Wicomb, Chinua Achebe, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Horovitz, Anita Desai, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Fred D’Aguiar and more in Wasafiri’s 25th Anniversary Issue.

The latest edition of The growth of Free State Black Writing (2009) journal features Tiisetso M Thiba, Teboho Masakala, Maxwell Perkins Kanemanyanga, Omoseye Bolaji and more.

Download the new issue of Saraba Magazine. And a call for a collection of short fiction to be published February 2010.

Contributor to Chimurenga 14: Everyone Has Their Indian (April 2009), Kenyan Artist-Activist Shailja Patel, will be the guest artist at the ‘RE/VISIONS: Poetry, Performance and Resistance’ on November 7.

German Magazine Freitext runs a translation of Suren Pillay's "The Picture" first published in CHIMURENGA 11, conversations with poets who refuse to speak. Read it here.

Mandisi Majavu reviews AK Press’ Black Flame: The revolutionary politics of anarchism and syndicalism by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt. Read it here.

Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s In Dependence, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You By Chance and Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This forthcoming are forthcoming from Cassava Republic. Details here.

Feminist poet Natalia Molebatsi releases her first anthology: Saro Dance.

"I especially like to write as a man... men are very simple creatures, much simpler than women": BBC interviews Petina Gappah.

Marie NDiaye is the first woman in a decade, and the first black woman ever to win the Prix Goncourt.

Sefi Atta’s  Lawless and Other Stories published last year by Farafina, has won this year’s Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

Adimora-Ezeigbo wins the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize with her first ever poetry book titled Heartsongs, while Toni Kan and Ozioma Izuora jointly won the ANA/NDDC Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize for Prose with Nights of the Creaking Bed and Dreams Deferred respectively.

2009 is the 10th anniversary of the Caine Prize for African Writing: E.C. Osondu, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Mary Watson, S.A. Afolabi, Brian Chikwava, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Binyavanga Wainaina, Helon Habila, and Leila Aboulela.

Badilisha Poetry X-Change is inviting poets to submit recordings of their work to BadilishaPoetry.com for podcasting. For submissions guidelines and more information email: malikan@africacentre.net.

Sound & film

Sound Reasons 't0': a sonic compilation produced at the Sarai Media Lab and featuring various artists from all over the world like SoundSkill, monoton, diF, Audio Pervert, da -Saz, DJ Spooky, edGeCut and more is now available. Listen to the tracks here.
For Actual hard copies and for Distribution write to ish[at]sarai[dot]net.

Also check out Tinker.Solder.Tap a new graphic novel with text by Bhagwati Prasad and graphics by Amitabh Kumar.

The Fela revival continues with a CD, DVD and MP3 re-release in one package from Knitting Factory Records.

South African artists Jitsvinger and Kyle Shepherd in the African hip hop radio studio together with Vieira from the Netherlands (via Cape Verde). Listen in here.

33rd Cairo International Film Festival November 10 - 20 includes African cinema and dedicate a special section (The Black Pearl), featuring films from all over the African continent. Details here.

The Black Filmmaker (bfm) International Film Festival (IFF) takes place until November 10 in London. Filmmakers featured as part of the festival programme include Menelik Shabazz, Frances Anne Solomon, Tunde Kulani and Djibril Diop Mambety.

Wole Soyinka: Child of the Forest, director Akin Omotoso’s documentary film on the writer and activist Wole Soyinka on show in New York City on Friday, November 27, at 8pm.

"In such a political context in which the imagining of black life takes shape under the shadow of the race relations left over from apartheid, the depiction of black life, whether individual or collective, cannot be taken as completely innocent." A e-symposium on Humanizing Aliens Or Alienating Africans?: District 9 And The Politics Of Representation at www.zeleza.com

Art

Get to the Keleketla Resource Centre’s fundraising art auction at Afrique gallery www.artafrique.co.za on November 24 at 6pm help raise funds to benefit a community media lab for youth of the inner city of Jozi. DJ Davina provides the beats and magazines and books (including Chimurengas and Chimurenganyanas as well as Richard Roodt latest project, The Orange Book Vol. 2.) are on display. Watch this space for news on Keleketla’s Stokvel 3 on November 28.

8th Bamako Encounters - African Photography Biennial runs from November 7 to December 7 in Bamako (Mali).  This year’s edition explores how borders affect peoples, identity, religion, territories, economical resources, sociopolitical contexts, movement and displacement. More here.

Artists including Ingrid Mwangi, Andrew Tshabangu, Ananias Leki Dago, Prina Shah, Bili Bidjocka and more show work in Amnesia at the National Museum Nairobi until 31 December.

FOCUS10 invites galleries, publishers and institutions involved in the creative African network, to apply to exhibit at Art Basel (June 16-20, 2010). Details here.