Litnet

For now, love, talk, write, have toast and tea – or bubbly – and live. If you want to explore the wonders of other lives, read.

"In a way, for me, writing is another kind of view of the world, with words and sentences and stanzas that seem to have allowed me to redefine myself under the trees: to re-see."

"I wanted to express the differing textures of space in South Africa, the different backgrounds that brush up against each other in all kinds of spaces."

"You cannot leave parts of yourself at the door as you enter the places where you spend most of your time."

"I had no idea that I would ever get to mix with presidents and Hollywood stars."

"Space doesn’t allow for a much longer review than this, but suffice it to say that Mouton’s treatment of Zach de Beer’s career covers all the high and low points."

"Two biographies of Sir Ernest are both out of print, and Harry has, until this month, eluded biography."

"On a thematic level, Recessional deals with the inexorable need for institutions together with us as individuals to grapple with the world and society as it changes, and what happens when institutions and those who run them fail to understand the need for change."

"I often want to look away from all that is broken here, and often still do, but there is something that makes looking away in South Africa particularly haunting, I find. If you look away with your eyes, does it mean you look away with your mind, your heart, etc?"

"He challenged us as a country and individually, to think and write and reason and argue better, and to be better."

From 15 to 18 June story lovers and love stories will mingle with academics, movie makers and robot coders to make the 2023 edition of the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival unforgettable.

"I’m interested in writing queer South African stories and normalising these experiences. I write about intimacy, gender and sexuality, and I would love it if my writing could really give a voice to intersectional people, often ignored or overlooked."

"This book is a critique not only of the publishing world, but of our Western culture and late-capitalism-induced way of life."

Editing encompasses a wide range of skills and procedures, many of which are mysteries to the reading public, and hotly debated even within the publishing and journalism fields.

This online course is designed for the creative writer who hopes to tangibly improve their creative work. Over the course of six two-hour sessions, we will explore the fundamental elements of creative writing.

"It’s gratifying to see how many people from diverse backgrounds want to write, how many stories are waiting to be told, how many new talents are emerging. That does make me optimistic."

"We all have those roads-in-the-yellow-wood dudes – the unready loves who left us, or we left. Sometimes, in the small, shuddery hours, they come back. I think about them; I’m glad I knew them."

The conversations with 21 activists from South Africa and Israel who campaign for Palestinian rights shatter perceptions cultivated by widespread propaganda to show that the issue is, after all, not so difficult to understand.

This June, in the middle of the knypkoue Karoo winter, Cradockians are opening their hearths and hearts to all to warm their souls at the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival, where creatives gather to meet and share and celebrate the art of the word and the legacy of Olive Schreiner.

"If 'corrupted' in his title seems like an exaggeration, read the book. It is soul-destroying to see such evidence of institutions that ought to be custodians of the highest standards in civil society being so susceptible to looting, extortion, fraud, bullying, even assassinations. Many of our universities are in the same state as the most beleaguered of our municipalities and state-owned enterprises."