This Week in Literary News: Week of April 4

This month is full of chances to see Catalyst authors in action. First up, catch Catalyst publisher/founder Jessica Powers and her brother and Broken Circle (Akashic Books) co-author Matthew as part of Cochise College’s Community Creative Writing Celebration on April 16. The reading will be followed by a Q&A, then an open mic. Learn more here. And on April 21, you can catch Sifiso Mzobe, author of the award-winning novel Young Blood, as he steps on the virtual stage for Stony Brook University’s Creative Writing and Literature Writers Speak Wednesday series. The event will be streamed live on the university’s YouTube channel. More information here. Sifiso’s novel is out on April 13.

In other news, following the controversy around American Dirt, Michael Ugarte of Africa is a Country, raises questions about another book, Palmeras en la Nieve, whose “critical reception among historians of Spanish colonization efforts in Africa has been less than positive.”

“Animals have inspired writers since the beginning of the written word” The New York Times presents “Writer’s Best Friend,” a look at some notable writers furry friends, including Jackie Collins’ poodle, George Orwell’s goat, Muriel, and Toni Morrison’s cat. 

“As a community, Asian-Americans are used to our names being botched, but this time we couldn’t excuse it. These women couldn’t speak for themselves; we had to become their voices.” Lovely essay by Christiana Lilly on the dignity of names, violence, and “loving this country, even when it doesn’t always love us back.“

Huge congratulations to Catalyst authors Barbara Boswell (Unmaking Grace) and Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy)! Both have work in the new anthology, Surfacing: On being black and feminist in South Africa (Wits University Press). The authors in the collection “use creative expression, photography and poetry in eclectic, interdisciplinary ways to unearth and interrogate representations of Blackness, sexuality, girlhood, history, divinity, and other themes.”

For National Poetry Month, JSTOR Daily gives us “ten poems that explore past and present, pain and love, language and family, history and identity, all written by contemporary Black poets.”

April is also Jazz Appreciation Month. In celebration, some South African jazz institutions are partnering to present a free online festival celebrating the music. Learn more here.

The Washington Post has a fascinating story about Mélisande Short-Colomb, who at 63 enrolled as a freshman at Georgetown University. As great as that is, it’s not even scratching the surface. Short-Colomb “is a direct descendant of two enslaved people who were sold by the Jesuits, her “three-times-great-grandparents” Mary Ellen Queen and Abraham Mahoney,” and wrote a play honoring them “about the 300-year history of the women of my family, their wounds, their children being born slaves.”