New writing
Fiction and prose by established and emerging authors. Send your poetry or fiction to New Writing at skryfwerk@litnet.co.za to be considered for publication on LitNet.
Please note that work previously published in print or on any online media platform will not be considered for selection.
A silver fish swallowed my mother
2015-10-16"White, like the fishermen’s cottages in her favourite tapestry of the Sardinian Sea."
What is preventing linguistic cross-pollination?
2015-09-16On UWC Creates and the lack of literary translations from and into other indigenous languages.
Muti water
2015-05-06"Every Monday morning she came walking up the dirt road from the black township, wearing her brightly coloured Basotho blanket around her shoulders and her orange-and-black headscarf."
The we field
2014-09-17 The microbus goes again, and she is alone when she trudges along the mud-smeared path to the front door of the long building, a forty-year-old woman in a long brown skirt, long red pullover, and a woollen cap with flaps hanging over her ears.
Ons Klyntji - A call for contributions
2014-05-13 Herewith a call for contributions of all creed, colour and cadence (and cadenza) toward a new edition of Ons Klyntji.
Lamb (five haiku)
2014-04-17 Brilliant inner sea –His cry glides across the moon.
This mother tongue comforts me.
Morning stage
2014-04-17 The coach stopping,the dust settling,
the dew evaporating
from the cropped verge
at the roadside.
Nadia
2014-04-08 Nadia could not tell time yet. It was the stillness of the night that told her that it was already past midnight, to her a magical line between today and tomorrow. She was born at this hour, her mother always said. She was called Nadia because the stillness of the hour brought hope that the morning was approaching.
Cry, South Africa
2014-04-08 "The day I saw him on televisionI knew where the leaves of democracy had fallen."
Om teen clichés te stry, te swerf en daarmee te groet
2014-04-02Die laaste sinne van my MA-skripsie wag om geskryf te word. Ek moet dus groet. Dit was groot pret en baie insiggewend om julle skryfwerk te begelei. Dit was heerlik om te sien dat daar soveel aspirantskrywers in Afrikaans en Engels skryf en stelselmatig leer om meer oorspronklik te kyk, dieper te dink en meer te lees.
Livid
2014-04-01"In Camden they brought
flowers, fags, and vodka with
a pomegranate blend
like a bludy munkey"
Oyster
2014-04-01 "The fisherman looks down to see an oyster in his netthat seems to say “Come for me. When will you come for me Saviour?”
I surrender! I climb into the river of silk
hiding the bad talent of a needle and dignified flowering bone."
Japan
2014-03-26 "Their words are as old as a telescope, fossils, totem poles,tribes, trees, Darwinism, the touch of the hands
of my paternal grandmother, antiques,
the coelacanth, the dishes that are waiting
for me in the sink, the footprint of childhood
On the beach sucking a waterfall of sea."
Entries open for third SCrIBE Scriptwriting Competition
2014-02-14 Entries open on 1 March, closing date for applications is 31 July and the top five scripts will be selected for a week-long staged reading in October, with the opportunity for discussion and feedback from the public and members of the theatre industry.
Ode to the internet
2014-02-04 "Its insubstantial web cocoons the globe,in threads of gossamer. It carries
my messages of love across the seas,"