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SHORT.SHARP.STORIES returns with an exciting theme: FLUID – FREEDOM TO BE
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Category Archives: News
Interview with a former refugee, Karina Szczurek
LitNet: You were a refugee, fleeing from an oppressive regime. Please share with us what those thousands of women and children who are now seeking refuge must feel like?
Karina Szczurek: I was a child when my parents decided to flee Poland in the 1980s. My brother was six and I was ten at the time. It was very difficult to comprehend what was happening to us, but at least we were secure in the knowledge that our parents were with us at all times and would take care of us, no matter what. Our lives were never in danger. Watching Ukrainian parents evacuate their children to safety while staying behind to fight for their future breaks my heart. I cannot imagine the levels of anxiety and distress this kind of separation causes for a family. These people will never fully recover from this, even if they survive.
LitNet: Do you know Ukraine at all?
Karina Szczurek: A little bit. I spent three weeks in the beautiful Lviv on a student exchange in 1997. We also travelled outside this historic city. It was a formative experience. During these three weeks, I experienced for the first time the real closeness of the two languages – Polish and Ukrainian – met Charlotte, who remains a very dear friend, and discovered my love for opera and ballet at the stunning Ivan Franko Lviv State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (renamed since then). I specifically remember how friendly and welcoming everyone I met there was, and I will never forget their delicious black bread (I couldn’t get enough of it).
Continue reading: LitNet
DISRUPTION: New Short Fiction from Africa, edited by Rachel Zadok, Karina Szczurek and Jason Mykl Snyman
Today, I had to go to Digital Action, the printers responsible for printing the Short Story Day Africa anthologies and most Karavan Press books, and spotted a small pile of Disruption copies – I could not resist and disrupted the ordinary order of things: I brought one copy home before the official release. The book should be ready for distribution next week. Get your copy as soon as you can – these stories are brilliant!
dis• rup • tion /dɪsˈrʌp.ʃən/ [noun]
Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process.
This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. In these evocative, often prescient, stories, new and emerging writers from across Africa investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more.
From a post-apocalyptic African village in Innocent Ilo’s “Before We Die Unwritten”, to space colonization in Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s “Static”, to a mother’s attempt to save her infant from a dust storm in Mbozi Haimbe’s “Shelter”, Disruption illuminates change around and within, and our infallible capacity for hope amidst disaster. Facing our shared anxieties head on, these authors scrutinize assumptions and invent worlds that combine the fantastical with the probable, the colonial with the dystopian, and the intrepid with the powerless, in stories recognizing our collective future and our disparate present.
Disruption is the newest anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a non-profit organization established to develop and share the diversity of Africa’s voices through publishing and writing workshops.
Published by Short Story Day Africa in SA and Catalyst Press in the US.
Review: Adamastor City by Jaco Adriaanse
Adamastor City is a first in all kinds of fascinating ways: for the author, Jaco Adriaanse, it is a debut novel and the first book in The Metronome Trilogy, and it is the first title for the new, independent publisher on the block, Burnt Toast Books, established this year by Robert Volker, who wants to focus on shorter forms and allow authors more freedom to experiment.
Volker is redefining the publishing threshold in the sense that, as an author, you don’t have to offer him a conventional doorstopper of a manuscript in order to be acknowledged. As a reader, you can expect to be engaged and entertained. In this respect, Adamastor City is an excellent flagship for Burnt Toast Books. Written in the form of a long prose poem that rhymes, it tells the story of a young boy who questions whether there isn’t more to life than his predictable parents have to offer. He asks the universe to intervene and is granted his wish, setting out with his robot on a quest to save the world. Inspired by the Adamastor myth, first recorded by the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões in his epic poem Os Lusíadas (1572) about the mythical character Adamastor, a personification of the Cape of Storms, Adamastor City is set in a futuristic Cape Town that is infused with the stories of the past.
Perhaps a little challenging at first glance, Adriaanse’s sci-fi take on this ancient story is anything but. The quirky plot and the rhythm of the text draw you in and keep you going until the last page is turned. The accompanying illustrations by Luami Calitz are stunning. It might not be everyone’s cup of novel, but for those readers wanting to experience something refreshingly different, it is a literary joyride.
The Metronome: Adamastor City
Jaco Adriaanse
2020
Review was first published in the Cape Times on 13 March 2020.
HAIR: Weaving and Unpicking Stories of Identity – first reviews
“There is nothing boring about this anthology!” writes Consuelo Roland (author of The Good Cemetery Guide, Lady Limbo and Wolf Trap) on Goodreads, and continues: “Many of the stories are partially embedded in time and space against the background of South Africa’s apartheid legacy, but there is also spontaneity, humour and mystery, and a sense of how one might wriggle out from under the weight of our hair (the burdens of past and present). As the first brilliant story ‘The Collection’ by Alex Latimer reminds us hair is something dead and yet it makes us alive and present. Other stories that stayed with me (yours may well be different, this collection is that good!): ‘Before We Go’, ‘Spa Ritual’, ‘The Wisdom of Sunday’, ‘A Woman’s Glory’, ‘At Length, Hair’s Breath,’, ‘That Famous Winter Brown’, ‘Let The Music Play On’, ‘Reunion’. And then there’s the soulful, beautifully written (not an unnecessary word) ‘Lila’, by Bongani Kona, that felt like someone had thrown a brick at my chest so that I could hardly breathe with the sadness of it…”
To read the entire review, please click here: Goodreads
The collection has also been chosen by Nancy Richards as one of “ten top local titles” for “holiday reading” in the December issue of Country Life. The magazine is running a competition in which you can win a copy of HAIR among a few other fabulous local titles. Click here for details: Win this Holiday Reading Books Hamper.
Photo: Country Life
HAIR: Weaving & Unpicking Stories of Identity
Joanne Hichens and I are thrilled to announce that the anthology we co-edited — HAIR: Weaving & Unpicking Stories of Identity — is going to be launched at the Open Book Festival this year!
HAIR: Weaving & Unpicking Stories of Identity is a collection of short stories inspired by hair. Like skin, hair is a body feature with a complex and controversial history, and is constantly under scrutiny in the media, specifically with regard to identity. HAIR: Weaving and Unpicking Stories of Identity features short stories by contemporary established and emerging South African writers of diverse backgrounds writing about hair and its intimate, personal as well as socio-political meaning. The book includes illustrative photographs by local visual artists. We hope that the stories will entertain, delight and challenge the reader.
“Dreadlocks, perms, afros, wigs and braids; hair is an extension of our ever-changing selves. In this startling new collection of masterful African stories juxtaposed with vivid modern photography, we see hair woven firmly into lives like generational pain in families. Or watch it blossoming into grand filaments of pride and reservoirs of power. Ranging from the fantastical to the mundane, the surly and mysterious to the jovial and witty, reading the stories in Hair will make yours stand on end.”
– Efemia Chela
Stories by Diane Awerbuck, Tumelo Buthelezi, Craig Higginson, Mishka Hoosen, Bobby Jordan, Shubnum Khan, Fred Khumalo, Bongani Kona, Alex Latimer, Kholofelo Maenetsha, Songeziwe Mahlangu, Mapule Mohulatsi, Palesa Morudu, Tiffany Kagure Mugo, Sally-Ann Murray, Sue Nyathi, Alex Smith, Melissa A. Volker, Lester Walbrugh, Mary Watson, Michael Yee
The title is appropriately deceptive. The reader goes into the stories expecting, and hoping, to engage with the politics and the business of hair. And the anthology brings all that successfully to the fore, but offers much more. Although the common narrative is about the politics of hair, what you will mostly find in these pages are stories about life and/or death, with hair in all its physical manifestations as a recurring motif.
– Palesa Morudu
Photographs by Kirsten Arendse, Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, Nina Bekink, Noncedo Charmaine, Keran Elah, Retha Ferguson, Sue Greeff, Liesl Jobson, Simangele Kalisa, Andy Mkosi, Manyatsa Monyamane, Nick Mulgrew, Aniek Nieuwenhuis, Chris Snelling, Karina M. Szczurek, Lebogang Tlhako, Karina Turok, Michael Tymbios, Jasmin Valcarcel, Megan Voysey
“Enthralling. Excellent idea given rich life by sharp writing and exquisite images.”
– John Maytham
EDITORS: Joanne Hichens and Karina M. Szczurek
FOREWORD: Palesa Morudu
ISBN: 978-0-9946805-4-9
PUBLICATION DATE: September 2019
PUBLISHER: Tattoo Press
HAIR will be launched at the Open Book Festival on 7 September at the Fugard Studio, 20.00-21.00. Please join the editors and a few of the contributors for the occasion!
Our CapeTalk interview with Refilwe Moloto: HAIR
Announcing: The Philida Literary Award
Today is the fourth anniversary of André Brink’s death. As we – his readers and loved ones – remember André, I would like to share the news that from next year on there will be a literary award given in André’s honour. The award will be named after a historical figure, the slave woman Philida van de Caab who entered the archival records because of laying an official complaint against her masters, Francois and Cornelius Brink, distant relatives of André’s. She became the protagonist of André’s last published novel, Philida (2012). André’s rendition of her courage and resilience continues to inspire me – and many others – as a woman and a writer.
As I wrote in the Note on my latest publication, You Make Me Possible: The Love Letter of Karina M. Szczurek and André Brink (Protea Book House, 2018), with André’s encouragement and support I was able to acknowledge the fact that I was a writer and that this would be forever my way of being in the world. He was an inspiration to many other writers and he was always generous with his time and expertise in furthering the literary careers of others. It is therefore my wish to establish the Philida Literary Award with the royalties from You Make Me Possible.
The Philida Literary Award will be awarded to a writer mid-career for an oeuvre of between three to five books of any genre. The idea behind the recognition is to acknowledge an author with a consistent record of publishing works of excellence and to encourage them further in their pursuit of a literary career. The award announcement will take place annually on the anniversary of André’s death, 6 February, starting with the fifth anniversary in 2020. Thus, locally, it will be the first literary award given every year.
Judges who are immersed in the local literary community will join me each year in choosing a worthy winner. Each winner will be given an award certificate and an amount of money that will be at first determined by the royalties, and in future on funding which is in the process of being secured.
Picture above: Fragment from the cover illustration of Philida by Joe McLaren.
Thank you to Rachel Zadok, the founder of Short Story Day Africa, for inspiring the ideas behind the criteria of the award.
Tribute André Philippus Brink
Four stories from Touch longlisted for TWENTY IN 20
I am delighted to announce that the following four short stories from Touch: Stories of Contact by South African Writers have been included on the 50-titles strong longlist for the TWENTY IN 20 project which aims to publish an anthology of the best twenty South African short stories written in English during the past two decades of democracy:
“File Under: Touch (Avoidance of, Writers); Love (Avoidance of, Writers). (1000 words)” by Imraan Coovadia
“Threesome” by Emma van der Vliet
“Salt” by Susan Mann
“The Crossing” by Damon Galgut
Other Touch authors are also on the list, but with different stories:
Byron Loker with “New Swell” from his debut collection by the same title (2006)
Ivan Vladislavić with “The WHITES ONLY Bench” from Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories (1996) and “The Loss Library” from The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories (2011)
Zoë Wicomb with “Disgrace” from The One That Got Away (2008)
Mary Watson with “Jungfrau” from Moss (2004)
Henrietta Rose-Innes with “Homing” from the collection by the same title (2010) and “Poison” from African Pens: New Writing from Southern Africa (2007)
Alistair Morgan with “Icebergs” from The Paris Review (2007)
Liesl Jobson with “You Pay for the View – Twenty Tips for Super Pics” from Ride the Tortoise (2013)
Nadine Gordimer with “Loot” from the collection Loot and Other Stories (2003)
About Touch: Stories of Contact (2009):
For this unique and impressive anthology, some of South Africa’s top storytellers were invited to interpret the theme of touch. The result is a scintillating collection of twenty-two stories about all kinds of human interaction. There are tales of love lost, and of discovering intimacy. Some describe encounters with strangers, others examine family relationships. Most deal touch in a physical sense; one or two explore the idea of ‘keeping in touch’.
Touch: Stories of Contact brings us work from such established luminaries as André Brink, Nadine Gordimer, Damon Galgut and Ivan Vladislavić, and exciting new voices such as Alistair Morgan and Julia Smuts Louw. Whether poignant or humorous, fictional or autobiographical, these innovative tales remind us of the preciousness of touch and are a testimony to the creative talents of South Africa’s writers.
All the authors have agreed to donate their royalties to the Treatment Action Campaign. Every copy sold therefore contributes to the fight against HIV and AIDS.
Touch Contributors: Emma van der Vliet, Michiel Heyns, Elleke Boehmer, Susan Mann, Willemien Brümmer, Julia Louw, Anne Landsman, Byron Loker, Maureen Isaacson, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Imraan Coovadia, Jonny Steinberg, Mary Watson, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Alex Smith, André Brink, Damon Galgut, Alistair Morgan, Liesl Jobson, Nadine Gordimer, Lauren Beukes.
(From the short stories I know, I am also thrilled to see “Where Will He Leave His Shoes” by Karen Jayes, “The Pigeon Fancier” by Sarah Lotz, “Porcupine” by Jane Bennett, “A Visit to Dr Mamba” by Andrew Salomon, among others, on the list – these are the kind of stories you will never forgot after reading.)
Woordfees prize for debut writers
Invisible Others is one of three books nominated for the Woordfees prize for debut writers (Ontmoetingsprys vir debuutskrywers by Woordfees 2014).
I am delighted with the news and very sorry that I will be on a plane during the awards ceremony. Holding fingers and toes crossed (also for a safe journey!).
Karina Magdalena 