Litnet

The Washington, DC Youth Orchestra Program (DCYOP) will embark on an international tour to South Africa this July, presenting a series of performances that highlight the power of music to connect young artists across cultures.

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.

"The world did not embrace Abdullah Ibrahim despite where he came from. It embraced him because he carried where he came from so completely."

"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.

"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.