Litnet

The Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival takes place from June 18th to June 21st 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.

"Happy birthday, my love." 11 June 2026. In remembrance of Athol Fugard on what would have been his 94th birthday, Paula Fourie shares a poem with LitNet’s readers. The poem will appear in her debut poetry collection, Inked in bone, forthcoming from Granta in November 2026.

"Deaccessioned is a pristine and feral exhibition, currently on show at Oude Leeskamer in Stellenbosch. Its curators, Lizabé Lambrechts and Nicola Deane, have dared to break through a cultural resistance to decay and become more intimate with its many strange valences as an omnipresent social and existential force."

"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."

"The solution starts with a strong idea. If an idea is built on a simple human truth that people recognise and understand, language becomes far less of a barrier. A strong concept creates an emotional connection first, and language simply carries it."

"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."

From the vineyards and farmlands to its growing creative community, Durbanville is a town with stories in its soil and culture at its heart. That is what Kultura-fees celebrates. Open in spirit, it brings together local artists, emerging talent and established names on one shared stage.

"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."

"We are no longer merely integrating technology into business. We are redesigning the architecture of human work itself."

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.

"Curriculum change is ongoing, and we cannot instantly label these campaigns as an immediate cause. But the proximity of a new history CAPS to a charged political movement does make it harder to view the revision within a purely pedagogical space."

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."

Starring Cape Town-based actor Anzio September, a UCT Theatre and Performance graduate, the play sees him seamlessly embody five distinct characters in a performance that is as emotionally raw as it is captivating.

"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.