Olufemi Terry wins "African Booker"

The Caine Prize for African Writing, an annual prize awarded to an author of African origin who has published a short story in English, has bestowed its honor (and it's £10,000 (approx $15,000) prize) on Olufemi Terry for his short story "Stickfighting Days" on July 5.

"Stickfighting Days" tells the story of glue-sniffing young boys who wage playtime wars in a dump in Nairobi. It is the second short story that Terry has written, and it was published in the African magazine Chimurenga (vol. 12/13).

Terry, who was born in Sierra Leone and now lives in Cape Town, South Africa, has lived, worked, and studied in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Côte d'Ivoire, the United States, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda. A journalist by profession, Terry generally writes about the African diaspora. With his winnings, he hopes to focus on completing a novel tentatively titled The Sum of All Loses.

The Caine Prize for African Writing, frequently called the "African Booker," has been administered every year since 2000. The judges include Fiommetta Rocco, literary editor of The Economist, who called Terry a "talent with an enormous future" and described his story as "ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative ... present[ing] a heroic culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception."

Follow this link to learn more and to purchase the issue of Chimurenga featuring Terry's story.

An Interview with Syl Cheney-Coker

On the eve of the publication of his latest poetry collection, Stone Child, Sierra Leonean Syl Cheney-Coker sat with Niyi Osundare of Newswatch Magazine to discuss his poetry, his country, and his experiences with the publishing industry.

Question: ‘Turkish Diptych’; ‘Iranian Diptych’; Toronto’s Harbourfront; Tupac Amaru of the Incas; Wole Soyinka, Amadu Diallo (‘an unarmed African immigrant shot 41 times by undercover New York Police Department men); The Gods of the G8 Summit; etc. Your poetry breathes with diverse persons and places. What would you say to readers who call you a ‘poet of the world’?

Answer: It is a description that I accept: something, I believe, that comes out of my make-up; the sense of being a cultural hybrid; interconnecting with the rest of the world, free of prejudices and, in reality, benefiting from all the subterranean currents of cultural history that went into making me who I am, and thus, trying to write about it. As human beings, we are the beneficiaries of so many narratives, so many fusions of blood, languages and cultures that we would be foolish to deny. And given that as a poet, I have travelled to and lived on four continents, my poetry is like a sponge that has soaked up all the infusions into that life.

Cheney-Coker, who has been publishing since 1973, is perhaps most well-known for his epic novel The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, a fantastical chronicle of nearly four centuries of Sierra Leonean history. Cheney-Coker has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Fonlon/Nichols Award, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and his work has been widely translated. He spends much of his time living, writing, and teaching in the United States.

EC Osondu wins "African Booker"

The £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing, called the African Booker, was awarded to EC Osondu for his short story "Waiting," a sparse and resonant tale about a young boy in a refugee camp.

Osondu, a Nigerian native who now lives in the United States, published the story in Guernicamag.com in October, 2008. In addition to the prize money, he will receive a one-month residency at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, US, with all expenses paid.

The prize, in its tenth year, recognizes the best English-language short story written by an African author. Patrons of the award include Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, and Wole Soyinka.

Algeria welcomes Pan-African festival

The second Pan-African Festival since 1969 began July 5 in Algiers, Algeria, and will run until July 20, celebrating the arts, music, literature, and culture of fifty-one diverse African nations.

The first festival forty years ago celebrated the end of colonialism, but this free, non-commercial event will focus on a rebirth of artistic pursuits, the African cultural renaissance, with 500 musical performances, 41 plays, 9 art exhibitions, and several conferences featuring thousands of intellectuals, performers, and artists. Over two hundred literary titles will be republished and made available to attendees.

All African nations except Morocco will participate in the events, with additional support from the United States and Brazil, who each have substantial African-born populations. "Lucy," one of the oldest preserved remains of human civilization, will leave her home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for only the second time to be exhibited, and other attractions will include an extravagant parade and a fireworks display.

Algerian Minister of Culture Khalida Toumi told Liberté that Panaf 2009 is not a commercial operation, and that it is "the festival of the Algerian people".

"Everything must be free," she said. "The poster shows Africa in fireworks. And, well, that's the programme. All areas of culture will be at their dazzling best."

Adichie visits Dallas

Writing for the Dallas Morning News, Edward Nawotka was able to interview author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who was in Dallas promoting her new book, The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of short stories about life in Nigeria during times of war and of peace.

"In the West we have constructed a narrative where the wars and poverty are meaningless, with no real political or historical context, which suggests misery is this atavistic thing," she said, "But what gets forgotten is at the same time all this is happening, people are falling in love, people are still living their lives. That is what I'm trying to do with my fiction, to tell the stories with a bit of complexity, with balance. There needs to be balance."

Adichie currently lives in the Washington, DC Metro area and divides her time between Lagos and Maryland.

Book Review: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck

Donna Bailey Nurse of The Star reviews the latest short story collection from Orange Broadbrand Prize-winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck:

This superior collection accentuates the intellect, insight and blistering honesty that have made Adichie a prominent writer of her generation. Many of the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck contemplate the legacy of Nigerian independence: crime, political corruption, poverty and violence. Others interrogate the gender inequities that restrict the spirit of Nigerian women.

The result is a book impossible to put down. I tore through it like wildfire.

The collection debuts on June 16 and has received glowing advance reviews. Her previous novel Half of a Yellow Sun hauntingly and vividly depicted the Biafran War of the 1960's.