We’re getting so close to #ReadingAfrica Week! We’ve reached out to bookstores, libraries, publishers, and other literary organizations to spread the word about our annual celebration of African literature. But maybe the best advertisement is introducing you to the amazing group of storytellers and creatives that will be appearing on our live panels this week. All panels begin at 1PM New York| 6PM London| 8PM South Africa, and you can register for them here. We created a booklist on Bookshop.org featuring some of the works from our panelists. For those who’s work isn’t available in the US, be sure to check out African Books Collective.
On December 4, join us for Who is African: Place, Identity, and Belonging in Literature
Tope Folarin: Tope is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington DC. He serves as Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University. He is the recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Whiting Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. He is the author of the novel A Particular Kind of Black Man.
Yara Nakahanda Monteiro: Yara was born in Angola in 1979 and moved to Portugal when she was two years old. She writes poetry and fiction. Monteiro studied screenwriting and contemporary art. She has collaborated in the creation of scripts and screenplays for audiovisual arts and is a curator for podcast programming. Her stories and poetry have been published in various magazines such as Granta and Revista Pessoa. She is a regular guest speaker at universities on topics like feminism and Afro-European identities and narratives. She is the author of the novel Essa Dama Bate Bué!
Bridget Pitt: Bridget is a South African author and environmental activist who has published poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and three novels (Unbroken Wing, Kwela, 1998; The Unseen Leopard, Human & Rousseau, 2010; Notes from the Lost Property Department, Penguin, 2015). Two were long-listed for the Sunday Times Literary Awards. Her second novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize (2011) and the Wole Soyinka African Literature Award (2012). Catalyst Press is proud to be the US publisher for her forthcoming novel, Eye Brother Horn.
Shameez Patel Papathanasiou: Shameez was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. During the day she juggles her time between taking care of her daughter and working as a civil engineer where she designs roads and analyses traffic—but at night she writes! And she writes fantasy AND romance. Her fantasy novel, The Last Feather was published in July 2022 by Flame Tree Press.
Moderated by Dr. Holly McGee. Holly is a historian at the University of Cincinnati. Her research and teaching areas are African American History, comparative black politics, and South African history. She is the author of Racial Antiapartheid Internationalism and Exile: The Life of Elizabeth Mafeking, and founder of the nonprofit National Black Teachers Association.
December 6 Behind the Scenes: African Filmmakers and Writers on Interplay and Adaptation
Onyeka Nwelue is a Nigerian filmmaker, publisher, talk-show host, author, academic visitor and founder of the James Currey Society, at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford and a Visiting Scholar to the Centre of African Studies in the University of Cambridge. His UK debut, The Strangers of Braamfontein, published by Abibiman Publishing UK, won ANA Prize for Fiction in 2021 and Best Indie Novel Winner- The Crime Fiction Lover Awards in 2021. He is the Dean of the School of Cinematographic Studies at Université Queensland in Haiti. He has written 21 books – including novels, plays, poetry collections, a narrative in verse, works of non-fiction, a children’s book, and anthologies of essays. He has produced and directed feature films comprising 3 documentaries, and his non-fiction book, Hip-Hop is Only for Children, won the Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2015 Nigerian Writers’ Awards. His second novel, The Beginning of Everything Colourful, was shortlisted for the ANA Prose Fiction Prize in 2018, and his collection of poetry, The Lagos Cuban Jazz Club, was shortlisted for ANA Poetry Prize in the same year. He studied Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Directing at Prague Film School in Czech Republic. He was an Associate Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies, Ohio University, and is currently a visiting assistant professor and Visiting Fellow of African Literature and studies in the English Language Department of the Faculty of Humanities, Manipur University in Imphal, India.
Jenna Cato Bass is a South African film director, photographer and writer. She has written short stories under the name Constance Myburgh, one of which was shortlisted for the 2012 Caine Prize. In 2011 Bass founded Jungle Jim, a genre fiction magazine. Bass’s first feature film, Love the One You Love, was shot on a ‘nano-budget’ using hand-held consumer cameras and a partly improvised script. The film told the story of a sex phone operator negotiating her relationship with her boyfriend and considering a move to Korea. The film won Best South African Feature Film at the 2014 Durban International Film Festival. High Fantasy (2017) was a satirical thriller about a group of young travellers who mysteriously exchange their bodies on a camping trip. Flatland (2019), an all-female “South African kitsch-western genre mashup” was chosen as the opening film in the 2019 Berlinale Panorama.
Shofela Coker is an illustrator/art director born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2005 he moved to Memphis, Tennessee and attended the Memphis College of Art and graduated with a BFA in illustration. He began his career as a character designer and digital sculptor for the video game studios at Activision and Sony. He also worked as an art director for Jam City San Diego. In 2014, he Kickstarted and published Outcasts of Jupiter, an African futurist comic with his brother, Shobo Coker. After which he worked on the 2017 animated documentary, Liyana, which has won several awards including Best Documentary at the LA Film Festival and Grand Prize at the New York Children’s Film Festival. In 2022 he released the follow up to Outcasts of Jupiter called New Masters (Image Comics). He also directed Moremi, an animated short in the Kizazi Moto series for Triggerfish and Disney.
Anthony Silverston is partner and Head of Development at Triggerfish Animation Studios in South Africa where he is currently overseeing a slate of projects in development and production. These include Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, an anthology of 10 short films in production with Disney+, Mama K’s Team 4 with Netflix, and Kiya with Disney, eOne and Frogbox, as well as a number of feature films and TV series in development with various partners. In 2015, he oversaw the Story Lab, an initiative where 4 feature films and 4 TV series were chosen to be developed after a continent-wide search that drew almost 1400 entries. He also directed and co-wrote the feature film Khumba, which premiered in competition at Annecy International Animation Festival in 2013. The script, co-written with Raffaella Delle Donne, won a major UK scriptwriting competition in 2006 and was the first animation selected for No Borders Co-Production Market in its 30-year history. He has produced and written on Seal Team (released globally in December 2021 on Netflix), as well as Triggerfish’s first feature Zambezia. Silverston was also producer of the short film Belly Flop which screened at over 135 festivals and won 14 awards, and the Blender short film, Troll Girl.
Aoife Lennon-Ritchie is an Irish writer and literary agent living in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the owner of the Lennon-Ritchie Agency, a boutique literary agency based in Cape Town and the oldest literary agency on the continent of Africa. The agency represents a select group of international writers of literary and commercial fiction and non-fiction, and of T.V. and film scripts. She is co-owner and managing partner at Torchwood, a literary agency with offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg, where she represents screenwriters, directors, and producers in the film and television industry worldwide. She is also the author of a fantasy Viking series that kicked off with A Viking Legend.
Moderated by Stephen Embleton has multiple awards in online media, short film, documentaries and viral videos. He was born in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and is now a resident in Oxford, as the 2022 James Currey Fellow at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University. His background is Graphic Design, Creative Direction and Film. Stephen left an international award winning career as creative director in the advertising & design industry with the Ogilvy Group. He began his film career as graphic designer in a locally produced Warner Brothers production in 2003. Turning to writing, directing and editing short films in 2007 and 2008, he was a finalist in both South African and international online short film festivals. In 2008 he joined Earth Touch, a natural history documentary film production company, as an editor (Nat Geo Wild’s “Croc Labyrinth”), and soon became involved in producing and directing in the field – e.g. the 2011 free-diving documentary “Deep Blue Dive” which spanned from Cape Town and Mozambique to the Mediterranean Sea. He was the post-production stereographer, editor and assistant producer on the Smithsonian/Earth Touch 3D production “Predator Coast 3D”. In April 2013 he headed up Earth Touch’s Online team and in January 2014 launched the Earth Touch News Network, which included short-form news and viral content. Today, Stephen focuses on his novels, short story writing and publishing while involved in various film and media productions.
And finally on December 10, The Young Reader: African Children’s Literature
Ayo Oyeku, author and founder of Eleventh House publishing in Nigeria. His first novel won the Ezenwa Ohaeto Prize for Fiction, by the Society of Young Nigerian Writers. In 2016, he was shortlisted for the prestigious Golden Baobab Prize in the Early Chapters category.
Edwige-Renée Dro is a writer, literary translator (French and English) and a literary activist from Côte d’Ivoire. She is one of the laureates of the Africa39 project and her writings have been published by Bloomsbury, Ankara Press, Myriad Editions, Popula and many others.
Julia Norrish, Executive Director of BookDash, a South African organization that gathers creative professionals who volunteer to create new, African storybooks that anyone can freely translate, print and distribute.
Bridget Krone lives in Hilton, South Africa. She was an English teacher for a few years and then started writing English textbooks for South African schools. She still writes readers, study guides, teacher guides and textbooks, and has also compiled poetry and short story anthologies. She is also the author of two middle-grade books (both proudly published by Catalyst Press!)
