This has been an incredible year for us and so many of our authors.
- Idza Luhumyo was awarded the Caine Prize for her story, "Five Years Next Sunday”.
- Mbozi Haimbre was shortlisted for a Nommo Award for her story, “Shelter.”
Both of these appeared in our release, Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa.
- Bridget Krone was awarded a Skipping Stones award for her book, Small Mercies.
- Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu won a Windham-Campbell Prize.
Whew! It has been an exciting time.
We have one more thing to get excited about – Young Blood, the gripping coming-of-age novel by Sifiso Mzobe has been nominated for a 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!
The award honours books by black authors in the categories of debut fiction, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Young Blood joins fellow nominees This Life by Quntos KunQuest (Agate Bolden), The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton (37 Ink) in the Debut Fiction category.
The winners will be announced on October 27, 2022.
Learn more about the event, the nominees, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. And a huge congratulations to Sifiso!
Bridget Krone had a wildly successful book launch earlier this month when her middle-grade novel The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap was released in South Africa. Over 100 (!!) people gathered at the La Popote Cafe in Hilton to celebrate. Bridget was also interviewed on South African literature website, LitNet, which you can watch here. Bridget's book, about the power of friendship and community, is out now in South Africa, and releases this fall in the US.
More congratulations are in order! This time, direct them toward Dada Khanyisa, one of the many talented artists who worked on All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa. Dada was awarded the 2022 FNB Art Joburg Art Prize! Dada is a multidisciplinary artist working in paint, sculpture and installation, with a focus on the contemporary Black experience. "Winning the FNB Art prize feels like a recognition of one's creative efforts. It feels like recognition and celebration of the efforts I have invested into my practice."
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For our South African friends, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (The History of Man) and Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy) both spoke at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town. Siphiwe was on a panel on along with Andrew Brown and Margie Orford on power and justice in their novels. And Yewande was on a panel along with Pumla Dineo Gqola and Sihle-isipho Nontshokweni on feminist connections. The whole festival was fantastic!
Luke W. Molver, the talented comic creator behind Shaka Rising and King Shaka, was interviewed by South Africa's Berea Mail about his work and his experiences at ComicCon Africa. "What makes the medium of comics truly unique are the unseen events, actions and conversations that take place in the gutters between the panels. This is where the story germinates and grows, fertile in the readers’ imagination."
Caroline Kurtz has an essay at Women Writers about the process of writing memoir using her experiences writing A Road Called Down on Both Sides and her newest, Today is Tomorrow, as inspiration. "I found that my hard-earned emotional arc had become a solid thing. I had to cut it, as though with tin snips, and bend it into two new arcs, a process almost as hard as writing the book in the first place."
See also:
An interview with Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, winner of a Windham-Campbell Prize for 2022
Yewande Omotoso, author of Bom Boy, in conversation with Janet van Eeden
Why is Ethiopia at war? A Zoom interview with Caroline Kurtz
True magic amongst grinding poverty, no fairies: Bridget Krone on her latest book