Henrietta Rose-Innes

Elf:Fußballgeschichten aus Südafrika (Football Stories from South Africa) is a new anthology from German publisher Peter Hammer Verlag, timed to coincide with the World Cup year.

Edited by Manfred Loimeier, the book features 12 football-themed stories by local authors. It includes translated works by Diane Awerbuck, Lauren Beukes, Patrick Cairns, Greig Cameron, Kerry Leighton, Sarah Lotz, Maakomele Mak Manaka, Siphiwe ka Ngwenya, Vuyiswa Nodada, Xoli Norman, Henrietta Rose-Innes and Sifiso Zimba.

The publisher’s (Google-translated) website notes that the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is “an opportunity to gather stories from young South African authors, which cast a spotlight on football and the social framework in which this event will be held. [On] a life full of petty crime, AIDS and drugs, but also irrepressible zest for life and a playful ease in dealing with the burdens of societal change.”

I’m excited to hear that my unpublished story “Falling” has made the shortlist of the Willesden Herald short story competition. The other shortlistees are Toby Litt, Carys Davies, Kevin Spaide, Wena Poon, Jonathan Attrill, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Julia Goubert, Willie Davis and Tom Vowler. The winning story will be announced on a date still to be set, probably at the end of March.

My 2010 began with the nice news that my story ‘Poison‘ has been translated into Arabic. It appears in the Egyptian online journal Albawtaka Review, an “Arabic independent non-profit online quarterly concerned with translating English short fiction.” It looks great – I just wish I could read it …

A concise but wide-ranging overview of “South African speculative fiction over the ages” appears in the Nov edition of sci-fi/fantasy mag Locus. Read the full piece, by writer and academic Nick Wood, on the World SF blog.

The essay covers writing from the 20s up to the present day, and gives prominence to, among others, Lauren Beukes, Jane Rosenthal, Eben Venter and Zakes Mda, as well magazines Something Wicked, Probe and Chimurenga (the “Doctor Satan’s Echo Chamber” issue).

Many other authors are name-checked, including JM Coetzee, Michael Cope, Jan Rabie, Richard Kunzmann, Sarah Lotz, Elana Bregin and Dave Freer (and Tom Eaton and Henrietta Rose-Innes, who slide in on a “slipstream” technicality.) The article also touches on interesting debates about the state and future of the genre in Africa.

Please join Caine Prize winners Henrietta Rose-Innes and Mary Watson, in conversation with acclaimed novelist Imraan Coovadia, as they celebrate the launch of Ten Years of the Caine Prize in Cape Town.

This follows on from a successful UK launch tour of other previous winners. Henrietta and Mary will also read from new work.

From The Book Lounge newsletter: “This gorgeous new publication includes all the winning stories from the last ten years as well as additional stories from JM Coetzee, Ben Okri and Nadine Gordimer.” Read a brief review of the collection in the Financial Times here.

Date & Time: Wednesday, 28 October, at 5:30 for 6:00pm

The Book Lounge
71 Roeland st
Cape Town
RSVP: 021 462 2425
booklounge@gmail.com

Book details

• 10 Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing by The Caine Prize For African Writing
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781906523244
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Feel like a good scare in the week running up to Halloween? Lauren Beukes, Diane Awerbuck, Sarah Lotz, SA Partridge, Sam Wilson, Henrietta Rose-Innes and Werner Pretorius from The Book Lounge are part of the line-up of twelve writers – galvanised into life by horror writer Nerine Dorman – who’ll be congregating (in costume) this Friday to chill your blood:

This year the South African HorrorFest is bringing you even more cold thrills with its literary addition of Bloody Parchment. Join some of South Africa’s best authors gathering in the Lounge Of Horror to share their tales or slices of darkness and the macabre, at The Book Lounge, on Friday, October 23, from 6.30pm until 8pm at 71 Roeland Street (corner of Buitenkant Street).

So, shake out your Halloween costume, bring your jack o’ lanterns and RSVP at booklounge@gmail.com or on 021 462 2425. The 5th annual SA HorrorFest Film Festival runs from October 29 to November 5 at The Labia Theatre on Orange Street – www.HORRORFEST.info

Two new anthologies attached to the Caine Prize are now available. Ten Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing, published by New Internationalist, includes all ten of the winning stories since the prize’s inception (including my story ‘Poison’ and Mary Watson’s ‘Jungfrau’), but also stories by three African winners of the Booker: Ben Okri, Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee. Excitingly, Coetzee is contributing a previously unpublished story, ‘Nietverloren’.

Also available is Work in Progress, the 2009 Caine Prize anthology just published by New Internationalist and Jacana, which I posted about here. For those interested, I’ve put my story from the collection, also entitled ‘Work in Progress’, online here.

The annual Caine Prize short story collection, this year entitled Work in Progress and other stories, has been launched by New Internationalist and Jacana. The collection features the 2009 Caine Prize winner EC Osondu (Nigeria), as well as shortlisted writers Mamle Kabu (Ghana), Parselelo Kantai and Mukoma wa Ngugi (both Kenya), and our own Alistair Morgan (with his much acclaimed story ‘Icebergs’). Also included are stories written by myself (‘Work in Progress’) and 10 other writers who participated in the 2009 Caine Prize workshop in Ghana.

From the blurb:

Now in its 10th year, the Caine Prize presents another unmissable opportunity to tune in to what is going on in African fiction … in all, 16 short stories that make up some of the best new writing from across the continent.

The Professional Editors’ Group is running two panel discussions at the Cape Town International Book Fair. John Linnegar, Chair of PEG, writes: “The discussions will be on the role and contribution of the copy editor to producing that flawless publication: one focusing on fiction, the other on non-fiction.”

The Fiction panel takes place on Sunday 14 June 2009 @ 11h00 in Room 1.61
Chair: Michele Magwood (formerly of the Sunday Times, now freelance writer and editor)
Panelists: Henrietta Rose-Innes (author and former editor), Martha Evans (editor at Struik), Andrew Brown (author) and Tim Keegan (author)
[note: the time slot has changed and is no longer 16h00 as shown in the CTIBF programme]

The Non-fiction panel takes place on Tuesday 16 June 2009 @ 14h00 in Room 1.41
Chair: Ann Donald (former editor of Fair Lady, now owner of Kalk Bay Books)
Panelists: Jeremy Boraine (publisher), Russell Martin (editor), Martha Evans (editor at Struik), Inga Norenius (editor, HSRC Press), Jacques Pauw (author), James Woodhouse (author) and Isabelle Delvare (editor, publisher, academic)

Here are some pics from the recent Caine Prize Workshop for African Writers, which I was lucky enough to attend in Accra, Ghana, in April.

Pictured here: Nick Elam of the Caine, holding a torch for the legendary Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo, who graced us with her presence one evening during a deluge. While the rain threatened to wash our crumbling hotel out to sea, she read from her flash fiction and chatted with us about writing: warm, funny and wise.

Also pictured: Henrietta and Brian James suspended hair-raisingly above the rain-forest canopy, with Blessing Musariri clinging on for dear life in the background (Brian James has been awarded a “highly commended” in this year’s Caine Prize); and Blessing Musariri and Alba Kunadu Sumprim, staying cool in the heat. (Apologies for quality of pics, but all objects, persons and pieces of photographic equipment were thoroughly saturated with sweat and general tropical moisture for the duration of the ten-day workshop.)

Every year, the shortlisted entrants from the previous Caine Prize as well as a group of other promising young African authors are invited to join Nick Elam, his wife Helen and two facilitators in an African location to write a short story in ten days. (Last year’s event was in Noordhoek). The stories produced in these hothouse conditions, as well as the current year’s shortlisted stories, are published together in the annual Caine Prize anthology (last year’s being Jambula Tree).

This year the workshop was facilitated by acclaimed writers Aminatta Forna and Jamal Mahjoub, whose input was enormously helpful in bringing my own story in over the line. Also attending were Nigerian writers Maxim Uzoatu (shortlist 2008) and Uche Umezurike; Mohamed Gibril Sesay and Brian James of Sierra Leone; Ayesha Harruna Attah, Franka Andoh, Alba Kunadu Sumprim and Mohammed Naseehu Ali (shortlist 2008) of Ghana; and Blessing Musariri and Thabisani Ndlovu of Zimbabwe.