Litnet

We have an exciting announcement. Through a new partnership with the National Arts Festival, the Conference on Children’s Literature is now a hybrid event!

"Through research, I was trying to write the history of Soweto from the perspective of the people who lived there, and it was a multidimensional place."

"The cast of quirky feline characters kept me entertained, and the cat-themed humour added plenty of fun without taking away from the emotional moments."

Ken Forrester Wines is delighted to announce a new series of Bookshelf Events, bringing together acclaimed authors, passionate readers, and exceptional wines in an intimate and inspiring setting at the wine farm in Stellenbosch. The first event takes place on Thursday, 25 June 2026.

"Viewed in its entirety, Mathe’s biography is ultimately a meditation on memory, political ownership and historical erasure."

"In a world where we are regularly faced with body shaming and bullying due to appearance, this book allows us to talk to children openly about these important themes and how to deal with them."

The Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival takes place from 18 to 21 June 2026 in Nxuba (Cradock). The full programme of the festival, made possible by the Avbob Poetry Project and the Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, has been released.

"There’s something provocative when one tells the truth and lays one’s soul bare. And I guess honesty is provocative, and, like a fire horse, that kind of feeds me and inspires me. Writing Swift was not planned. It had to come out of me."

"In many ways, this is not merely a historical novel about Taiwan under Japanese rule, but a novel about every colonised society where the coloniser arrives convinced of their own sophistication while remaining blind to the humanity standing beside them."

"You have to create intrigue and curiosity pretty quickly for a reader to want to finish the story."

The theme for this year’s conference is: Indigenous Knowledge Systems for a New Era of Enlightenment.

"South Africa’s challenge is no longer simply moral reconciliation, but coordinated survival. The capacities produced by Afrikaner covenantal thinking – planning, infrastructure, institutional memory, long-horizon cooperation – cannot simply be discarded because the metaphysics that once organised them has shifted."

"Anyone who is interested in creativity may want to get hold of the book. While it is an academic text, Hardman writes fluently, and the bits that I have been reading since buying it are easy to understand."

The historic town of Nxuba (Cradock) is set to transform into a vibrant hub of literary exploration and artistic storytelling as the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival returns from June 18th to June 21st, 2026. This year’s festival promises an immersive experience, blending the rich heritage of the Karoo with contemporary voices in poetry, memoir writing, and social-media storytelling.

We received 240 submissions from poets across southern Africa. The poems showcased inventive use of language, humour, interplay between languages, truth-telling, and remarkable attention to specific details.

"It relies on recognisable structures of interpretation: the compromised genius, the corrupt system, the haunted past, the faithful wife who outlasts everything. These are presented with intelligence and elegance, but also with a certain complacency, as if their truth were self-evident tropes that need no further interrogation."

"While several fine stories here tie up their loose ends in very few words, the best of them almost invariably unsettle the reader’s expectations in one of two ways."

"I loved how seamlessly the story blends humour, adventure and creativity. While the stakes are higher and the danger more pronounced, the narrative maintains its light, quirky tone throughout."

What is Breyten Breytenbach’s poetic legacy? His daughter Daphnée Breytenbach and his French translator Georges Lory join Catherine du Toit, head of the French department at Stellenbosch University, for a conversation on Breytenbach’s lasting influence on French and South African literature at the Franschhoek Literary Festival.

For anyone who loves reading, writing and the Karoo, please join us at the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival from Thursday evening 18 June until Saturday night 20 June.