In the upcoming months, you’re going to have a lot of opportunities to see Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu in person, well, virtually in-person. On September 25, the Theory of Flight author visits the Harare Book Club, and on October 3, she heads to the Brooklyn Book Fair. Visit our event calendar to find out more, and stay tuned for more events! The Theory of Flight is out now, and her follow-up The History of Man is out in January.
One school district doesn’t quite get the spirit of Banned Books Week. Students at a a Pennsylvania school are protesting “after their school board’s conversation about a proposed diversity curriculum turned into a list of banned books,” LitHub reports. The books are all written by authors of color and/or feature characters of color, which the school board insists in just a coincidence. Also a coincidence: this link to Banned Books Week, which highlights the “shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” Banned Book Week runs from September 26 – October 2.
“The South, he says, is as much his as it is anyone’s. The nearby Emmaus Baptist Church was founded in 1867 by his ancestors. “Every scrap of land that a Confederate apologist walks upon,” he says, “somebody who looks like me has bled and cried and worked and died on. They don’t get to define it.”’ Crime writer S.A. Cosby on Black writers claiming the rural South.
“Over the last 23 years, this author who Toni Morrison said changed Black women’s literature forever has been an invisible woman.” The reemerging of author Gayl Jones
Looking for some tips on writing crime fiction? Divine Justice author Joanne Hichens joins fellow crime writer Michéle Rowe for a discussion on writing crime. You can watch their discussion here.
You can read one of the stories included in our recent release Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa at World Literature Today, “When the Levees Break” by Edwin Okolo. Okolo draws inspiration from the writing of Lesley Nneka Arimah to build his own world of birth factories, colossal levees, secret labs.
And speaking of short stories: “I hope that this story turns more eyes to the fact that Mali was the focal point of science, education, language, mathematics, and academia as a whole for a time [and] that Africans have a rich written history, contrary to the narrative so often pushed.” Nnedi Okorafor on her new short story release, “The Black Pages.”
