by Sophy on 23 May 2012
Alert! Nigerian author Jekwu Anyaegbuna has been named the winner of the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Africa Region for his story “Morrison Okoli (1955-2010)”.
Anyaegbuna wins £1 000 and will now compete for the overall Commonwealth Short Story Prize against four other regional winners, picked from a shortlist of 21: Asia regional winner, Anushka Jasraj (“Radio Story”); Caribbean regional winner, Diana McCaulay (“The Dolphin Catcher”); Pacific regional winner, Emma Martin (“Two Girls in a Boat”); and Europe and Canada regional winner, Andrea Mullaney (“The Ghost Marriage”). The winner of the £5 000 prize will be announced at the Hay Festival on 8 June.
Congratulations and best of luck to Jekwu Anyaegbuna!
‘Morrison Okoli (1955-2010)’, Jekwu Anyaegbuna (Nigeria)
“There was a public bed situated at the centre of a market in a remote village in Africa. The bed could kill; yet every villager, male or female, fought like a lion to lay his/her back on this bed every year. Whoever succeeded in sleeping on this famous furniture overnight became a servant in the king’s mother’s fortress. The Commonwealth competition is this bed, and I am immensely thrilled to have won for Africa. I strongly believe this prize will provide me with the hoes and shovels to serve my motherland, Africa, affording me the strength and opportunity to plough through the thick literary farmland across the world.”
Jekwu Anyaegbuna was raised and educated in Nigeria where he qualified as a chartered accountant. He was shortlisted by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the Farafina Trust International Creative Writers’ Programme. A graduate of the University of Ilorin, he writes both poetry and prose; and his work has been widely published, or will be published, in literary journals in the United States and the UK including Ambit, Orbis, Word Riot, Other Poetry, The Journal, Bow-Wow Shop, Eclectica Magazine, Atticus Review, Yuan Yang Journal, The Talon Magazine, Dark Lady Poetry, Asinine Poetry, Vox Poetica, Breadcrumb Scabs, Haggard and Halloo, New Black Magazine, Pattaya Poetry Review, Dcomp Magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Obsession, Black Heart Magazine and many other places. He hates mosquitoes and sometimes wonders whether they are domestic or wild animals. Jekwu lives, works and writes in Lagos where he has completed a manuscript of short stories. He is currently at work on his first novel.
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South African-born author Jacques Strauss was announced as the regional winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize, a companion award to the Short Story Prize, for his debut novel, The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. The overall winners of both prizes will be revealed on 8 June.
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Press release:
Commonwealth Writers has announced the regional winners for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Representing Africa, Asia, Canada & Europe, Caribbean, and the Pacific regions, these new writers will now compete for overall winner which will be announced at Hay Festival on 8 June.
Commonwealth Book Prize
Regional Winner, Africa
Jacques Strauss, South Africa The Dubious Salvation of Jack V, Jonathan Cape
Regional Winner, Asia
Shehan Karunatilaka, Sri Lanka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, Random House
Regional Winner, Canada and Europe
Riel Nason, Canada, The Town that Drowned, Goose Lane Editions
Regional Winner, Caribbean
Alecia McKenzie, Jamaica, Sweetheart, Peepal Tree Press
Regional Winner, Pacific
Cory Taylor, Australia, Me and Mr Booker, The Text Publishing Company
Commenting on the winners, Chair of the Commonwealth Book Prize, Margaret Busby said, “We were wonderfully spoilt for choice among some strong regional contenders on the shortlist, and although we could not take every favourite further, the books that triumphed are a reminder of what the best fiction can be: moving, entertaining, enlightening, exciting, engaging our thoughts and emotions, while creating an intimate connection with someone else’s imagination. Here are novels with memorable characters, unpredictable situations, a sense of humour, books that give insights into cultures and histories not our own, crafted by writers who care about language, and its ability to renew and enrich our view of the world. ”
Commonwealth Short Story Prize
Regional Winner, Africa
Jekwu Anyaegbuna, Nigeria, Morrison Okoli (1955-2010)
Regional Winner, Asia
Anushka Jasraj, India, Radio Story
Regional Winner, Canada and Europe
Andrea Mullaney, UK, The Ghost Marriage
Regional Winner, Caribbean
Diana McCaulay, Jamaica, The Dolphin Catcher
Regional Winner, Pacific
Emma Martin, New Zealand, Two Girls in a Boat
Chair of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Bernardine Evaristo said, “The five regional winning stories this year rose to the top of a pool of 2200 entries and are the result of vigorous debate among the judges. We discussed not only the quality of the storytelling but the context of their respective literary cultures including notions of stereotypes and ‘the prize-winning formula’. Our final choices encompass range, depth, beauty, unpredictability and re-readability. These short stories will take you on a journey that spans cultures, eras, generations, and diverse ways of being and seeing. To read them is to inhabit other worlds.”
Commonwealth Writers has partnered with Granta magazine to give regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize the opportunity to be published by Granta online during the week commencing 4 June.
John Freeman, Editor of Granta said: “The Commonwealth Short Story Prize introduces some of the best writers in the world, writers who bring a thrilling and essential glimpse of the world and the worlds that are within Britain. This is also what I hope Granta has been as a magazine. A Trojan Horse for writers you don’t know, but once you read cannot forget: writers who can make the ground beneath your feet a little more mysterious. I am pleased Granta can partner with the Commonwealth Short Story Prize to help carry this mission forward.”
Commonwealth Writers is a new cultural programme within the Commonwealth Foundation which develops, connects and inspires writers. By awarding prizes and running on-the-ground activities, it works in partnership with international literary organisations, the wider cultural industries and civil society to help writers develop their craft in the fifty four countries of the Commonwealth. www.commonwealthwriters.org is a forum where members from anywhere in the world can exchange ideas and contribute to debates.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2011, the Commonwealth Foundation re-launched its prizes to form part of Commonwealth Writers. The prizes act as catalysts to target and identify talented writers from different regions who will go on to inspire and inform their local communities.
Lucy Hannah, Programme Manager (Culture) Commonwealth Foundation, said “These two new prizes are a really positive start to Commonwealth Writers. We had entries from a huge range of countries including Lesotho, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Samoa. We’ll now be helping our regional winners to gain a wider readership, develop their craft and to inspire others in their region.”
Ends
Photos courtesy Black Heart Magazine and Culture Critic
by Lindsay on 23 May 2012
Alert! South African-born author Jacques Strauss has been named winner of the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize Africa Region for his debut novel The Dubious Salvation of Jack V.
The Dubious Salvation of Jack V is the story of eleven-year-old Jack Viljee who is growing up in Johannesburg during apartheid. Bruce Dennil dubbed the book “edgy” and “entertaining” in a review for The Citizen.
Strauss wins £2 500 and will now compete for the overall Commonwealth Book Prize against four other regional winners, picked from a shortlist of 19: Asia regional winner, Shehan Karunatilaka (Chinaman); Caribbean regional winner, Alecia McKenzie (Sweetheart); Pacific regional winner, Cory Taylor (Me and Mr Booker); and Europe and Canada regional winner, Riel Nason (The Town that Drowned). The winner of the £10 000 prize will be announced at the Hay Festival on 8 June.
Congratulations and best of luck to Jacques Strauss!
The Dubious Salvation of Jack V, Jacques Strauss (South Africa), Jonathan Cape
“I was completely gobsmacked to be shortlisted so I can’t really describe how surprised and happy I am to have won. I’m not the most impartial person in the world, but I love books about Africa – which is why I have always followed the Commonwealth prize. It’s introduced me to so many books and authors I would otherwise not have known about. It’s a strange, dark and amazing place that gives you stories from Conrad and Achebe and I think there are millions more stories to tell. I hope this prize means I can add a further story or two of my own.”
Jacques Strauss is a 30 year old South African. He studied philosophy at university, obsessed over Derrida and now writes reams of corporate copy for a London firm.
Last year’s awards went to Aminatta Forna for The Memory of Love (Best Book) and Craig Cliff for A Man Melting (Best First Book). However, the Best First Book award has now been refashioned as the Commonwealth Book Prize and the Best Book Prize has been dropped altogether.
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Nigerian author Jekwu Anyaegbuna was announced as the regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, a companion award to the Book Prize, for his story “Morrison Okoli (1955-2010)”.
The overall winners of both prizes will be revealed on 8 June.
~ ~ ~
Press release:
Commonwealth Writers has announced the regional winners for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Representing Africa, Asia, Canada & Europe, Caribbean, and the Pacific regions, these new writers will now compete for overall winner which will be announced at Hay Festival on 8 June.
Commonwealth Book Prize
Regional Winner, Africa
Jacques Strauss, South Africa The Dubious Salvation of Jack V, Jonathan Cape
Regional Winner, Asia
Shehan Karunatilaka, Sri Lanka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, Random House
Regional Winner, Canada and Europe
Riel Nason, Canada, The Town that Drowned, Goose Lane Editions
Regional Winner, Caribbean
Alecia McKenzie, Jamaica, Sweetheart, Peepal Tree Press
Regional Winner, Pacific
Cory Taylor, Australia, Me and Mr Booker, The Text Publishing Company
Commenting on the winners, Chair of the Commonwealth Book Prize, Margaret Busby said, “We were wonderfully spoilt for choice among some strong regional contenders on the shortlist, and although we could not take every favourite further, the books that triumphed are a reminder of what the best fiction can be: moving, entertaining, enlightening, exciting, engaging our thoughts and emotions, while creating an intimate connection with someone else’s imagination. Here are novels with memorable characters, unpredictable situations, a sense of humour, books that give insights into cultures and histories not our own, crafted by writers who care about language, and its ability to renew and enrich our view of the world. ”
Commonwealth Short Story Prize
Regional Winner, Africa
Jekwu Anyaegbuna, Nigeria, Morrison Okoli (1955-2010)
Regional Winner, Asia
Anushka Jasraj, India, Radio Story
Regional Winner, Canada and Europe
Andrea Mullaney, UK, The Ghost Marriage
Regional Winner, Caribbean
Diana McCaulay, Jamaica, The Dolphin Catcher
Regional Winner, Pacific
Emma Martin, New Zealand, Two Girls in a Boat
Chair of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Bernardine Evaristo said, “The five regional winning stories this year rose to the top of a pool of 2200 entries and are the result of vigorous debate among the judges. We discussed not only the quality of the storytelling but the context of their respective literary cultures including notions of stereotypes and ‘the prize-winning formula’. Our final choices encompass range, depth, beauty, unpredictability and re-readability. These short stories will take you on a journey that spans cultures, eras, generations, and diverse ways of being and seeing. To read them is to inhabit other worlds.”
Commonwealth Writers has partnered with Granta magazine to give regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize the opportunity to be published by Granta online during the week commencing 4 June.
John Freeman, Editor of Granta said: “The Commonwealth Short Story Prize introduces some of the best writers in the world, writers who bring a thrilling and essential glimpse of the world and the worlds that are within Britain. This is also what I hope Granta has been as a magazine. A Trojan Horse for writers you don’t know, but once you read cannot forget: writers who can make the ground beneath your feet a little more mysterious. I am pleased Granta can partner with the Commonwealth Short Story Prize to help carry this mission forward.”
Commonwealth Writers is a new cultural programme within the Commonwealth Foundation which develops, connects and inspires writers. By awarding prizes and running on-the-ground activities, it works in partnership with international literary organisations, the wider cultural industries and civil society to help writers develop their craft in the fifty four countries of the Commonwealth. www.commonwealthwriters.org is a forum where members from anywhere in the world can exchange ideas and contribute to debates.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2011, the Commonwealth Foundation re-launched its prizes to form part of Commonwealth Writers. The prizes act as catalysts to target and identify talented writers from different regions who will go on to inspire and inform their local communities.
Lucy Hannah, Programme Manager (Culture) Commonwealth Foundation, said “These two new prizes are a really positive start to Commonwealth Writers. We had entries from a huge range of countries including Lesotho, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Samoa. We’ll now be helping our regional winners to gain a wider readership, develop their craft and to inspire others in their region.”
Ends
Book details
Photos courtesy Amazon.co.uk and Black Heart Magazine
by Lindsay on 22 May 2012
In una stanza sconosciuta, the Italian translation of Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room has been shortlisted for the 2012 Gregor von Rezzori Award.
This year’s prize, awarded to the best foreign work of fiction translated into Italian, sees Galgut pitted against Emmanuel Carrère’s Vite Che Non Sono La Mia (Lives Other Than My Own), Jenny Erpenbeck’s Di Passaggio (Visitation), Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s Paradiso e Inferno (Heaven and Hell) and Enrique Vila-Matas’ Esploratori Dell’abisso (Exploradores del abismo).
The winner of the €12 000 prize will be announced at an awards ceremony in Florence on the 15 June. Try your Italian on the press release:
Ernesto Ferrero, presidente della giuria del Premio Gregor von Rezzori – Città di Firenze per la migliore opera di narrativa straniera tradotta in Italia – sesta edizione – annuncia gli autori selezionati: Emmanuel CarrèreVite che non sono la mia (Einaudi), Jenny ErpenbeckDi passaggio (Zandonai), Damon GalgutIn una stanza sconosciuta (e/o) Jón Kalman StefánssonParadiso e inferno (Iperborea), Enrique Vila-MatasEsploratori dell’abisso (Feltrinelli).
Andrea Landolfi, presidente della giuria del premio per la miglior traduzione in italiano di un’opera di narrativa straniera annuncia il vincitore: Bruno Berniper I figli dei guardiani di elefanti di Peter Høeg. La cerimonia di premiazione, dove sarà annunciato il vincitore della narrativa, avrà luogovenerdì 15 giugno alle ore 18.00, nel Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio a Firenze.
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by Lindsay on 22 May 2012
Brett Murray’s controversial painting, The Spear, in which Jacob Zuma is depicted with his genitals exposed, has upset the ANC. The party is pursuing an interdict against The Goodman Gallery, where the painting forms part of Murray’s latest exhibition, Hail to the Thief II, and the City Press, who published an the image on the painting on their website.
Ferial Haffajee, editor-in-chief of the City Press, has defended the newspaper’s decision to publish the image:
Did we think the image of President Jacob Zuma by Brett Murray was particularly beautiful to persuade us to publish it? No.
Would it be something I would hang at home? No.
There is a copy stuck on my office window, along with two others from Murray’s explosively angry exhibition of satirical graphic art.
Murray, now facing a demand from the governing ANC that he destroy the work, designed some of the anti-apartheid movement’s most iconic resistance art.
Nickolaus Bauer examines the constitutional implications of the interdict in an article for the Mail & Guardian:
The stage is set for a ground-breaking legal battle at the South Gauteng High Court this week as President Zuma’s right to dignity is weighed against the right to freedom of expression.
The president and the ANC is due to lock horns with the Goodman Gallery and City Press on Tuesday over the controversial exhibition and resultant publishing of Brett Murray’s contentious artwork The Spear.
Murray’s painting depicts Zuma with his genitals exposed, and forms part of his Hail to the Thief II exhibition.
The Spear received a further whack of fame and controversy this morning when it was defaced (censored?) with red and black paint:
According to eNews, the painting in the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg was defaced as the court case in which the ANC sought to compel the gallery to remove the artwork began in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
Eyewitnesses told the Mail & Guardian that two men painted a red “X” over the figure’s genital area and smeared the face and private parts with black paint. They were apparently locked in the guards’ hut before police arrived.
A university professor and a 25-year-old man are believed to be behind Tuesday’s defacing of a controversial painting of President Jacob Zuma.
The two were in custody at the Rosebank police station after they allegedly painted over the genitals on the artwork.
Greg Palmer, attorney for the Goodman Gallery which is hosting the exhibition by the artist Brett Murray, said the gallery would lay charges of destroying private property against them.
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Photo courtesy The Telegraph
by Lindsay on 22 May 2012
By Jackie May for The Times:
What you are reading?
Christopher Isherwood’s Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935).
In a nutshell?
On a train journey to Berlin in the early 1930s, a young Englishman meets Mr Norris, an older man wearing an ill-fitting wig. Mr Norris is a professional conman with deviant tendencies which Berlin’s underworld is able to indulge set against a backdrop of the conflict between communism and the sinister spectre of rising Nazism.
Why read it?
It’s funny.
Book details
by Sophy on 22 May 2012
Alert! The University of Johannesburg has announced the shortlists for their 2011/2012 Creative Writing Prize. The prize, awarded in the categories “main” and “debut”, is given without respect to genre, which means that literary non-fiction can compete alongside poetry and fiction. Interestingly, this year’s shortlists comprise six novels.
Competing for the R25 000 UJ Debut Prize, won last year by Shaida Kazie Ali, are first time novelists HJ Golakai (The Lazarus Effect), Shubnum Khan (Onion Tears) and Terry Westby-Nunn (The Sea of Wise Insects). Shortlisted for the R65 000 main UJ Prize, awarded last year to Ivan Vladislavic, are Finuala Dowling (Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart), Michiel Heyns (Lost Ground) and Craig Higginson (The Landscape Painter). Notably, both Heyns and Golakai were also shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize earlier this month.
The winners will be announced in June and the prizes presented at a gala ceremony later this year. Congratulations to all the shortlistees and especially to Books LIVE members Khan and Dowling!
The University of Johannesburg Prize: Main Award shortlist
- Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart — Finuala Dowling
- Lost Ground — Michiel Heyns
- The Landscape Painter — Craig Higginson
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The University of Johannesburg Prize: Debut Award shortlist
- The Lazarus Effect — HJ Golakai
- Onion Tears — Shubnum Khan
- The Sea of Wise Insects — Terry Westby-Nunn
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Book details
Image courtesy USACBI
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