Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Despite 30 years of repression that have hit writers unusually hard, Sudanese literature remains vigorous. Here is some of the best available in English
I was lucky to grow up in Khartoum in a house filled with books, at a time when Sudan’s public libraries flourished. One of the most startling discoveries I made as a child of about 13 was finding a couple of Tayeb Salih’s books on a shelf at home. Until that moment, I thought literature was something that took place elsewhere – in Dickens’s England or the Latin America of Borges, say. But here were stories that described the world right outside our front door. It was a moment of revelation and stirred the idea that it was possible to write.
More than 25 years after her groundbreaking Daughters of Africa anthology, Margaret Busby reflects on the next generation of black women writers around the world
Time was when the perception of published writers was that all the women were white and all the blacks were men (to borrow the title of a key 1980s black feminist book). At best, there was a handful of black female writers – Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou – who were acknowledged by the literary establishment. This was the climate in which, more than 25 years ago, I compiled and published Daughters of Africa. It was critically acclaimed, but more significant has been the inspiration that 1992 anthology gave to a fresh generation of writers who form the core of its sequel, New Daughters of Africa.
The critic Juanita Cox told me: “I received Daughters of Africa as a birthday gift from my father. Two things immediately struck me about the book. It was huge and it contained women like me. Even though I’d been brought up in Nigeria, I had had very little exposure to black literature. At school the only black characters I’d ever read about occupied the margins: figures like the Sedleys’ servant Sambo and the mixed-race heiress Miss Swartz in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Daughters of Africa introduced me to a huge number of writers I’d never previously been aware of. And on a more personal level it made me realise that I was somehow valid. The anthology was peopled not just by women of ‘pure’ African descent, but also women of mixed ancestry, and just like the women the book contained, I too could have a voice.”
Collection of writings just released includes references to rape of then-wife Jackie Sturm, herself an acclaimed poet and author
A new collection of letters from one of New Zealand’s most significant poets, James K Baxter, that includes a blunt admission of marital rape is causing shockwaves through the literary community.
Baxter died in Auckland in 1972 but remains one of New Zealand’s literary giants. He achieved international attention in the late 1950s after Oxford University Press published his poetry collection, In Fires Of No Return.
Bright Dead Things , Lucky Wreck , This Big Fake World and Sharks in the Rivers- returned in August with a selection of work that bravely explores agency, power and autonomy. Inside, LimA3n, who currently serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, writes frankly and ferociously about racism, fertility and gender roles-and even drafts up a new National Anthem.
In the many tributes that have been paid to John McCain over the last few days, he has been praised as a warrior, prisoner of war, leading member of Congress, presidential candidate, and statesman. Despite their differences with him, many if not most commentators have been quick to praise McCain as a great American.
This happened a few days ago but it's still worth chronicling as another example of social justice warriors demanding everything be made a safe space. The Nation published a poem by someone named Anders Carlson-Wee which is just over 100 words long.
For the past 40 years his writing and poetry have been the voice of the West Indian living in Britain. With his trademark fedora ever at a jaunty keel, and his wired spectacles, Jamaican-born, UK-bred writer Linton Kwesi Johnson, the has, through his work, continuously provided a window on the experiences of his people using the rich and multi-layered culture of his native Jamaica, particularly patois and reggae rhythms as the substrate from which grows the biting social and political commentary which is at the heart of his work.
A high-school student in Maine is suing the National Endowment for the Arts after the agency disqualified him from a poetry contest because he isn't an American citizen or green card holder. Allan Monga, a junior at Portland's Deering High School, fled Zambia last year and applied for asylum in the United States.
Smith has embarked on the first of several trips to bring her poetry to rural pockets of the co... The oldest victim swept away in a California mudslide was Jim Mitchell, who had celebrated his 89th birthday the day before and died with his wife of more than 50 years, Alice. The oldest victim swept away in a California mudslide was Jim Mitchell, who had celebrated his 89th birthday the day before and died with his wife of more than 50 years, Alice.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? When I saw that headline, I immediately had a hunch and - surprise! surprise! - my hunch was correct: As the year comes to a close, Hollywood releases its final batch of films, many of which will go on to earn plenty of Oscar nominations. One of them is Call Me By Your Name , a coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old boy who develops a romantic relationship with a 24-year-old man .
These days renowned poet and cultural critic Kevin Young is one of the most reviled and dismissed of figures: He's a learned expert on fakery. The author of "Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News" began the book six years ago, long before "fake news" became a depressingly common pejorative.
Versatility and brilliance follows Edward G. Pizzella in his endeavors. His recent undertaking in literature, specifically poetry, uncovers the literary savvy in him through the book 'Wordbridge: A Collection of Lyrical Poems'.
In this June 1989 file photo, Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks holds a portrait of herself painted by Anne-Cressey McGraw-Beuchamp at a ceremony in Chicago. Brooks would have turned 100 on June 7, 2017, something places around the country are commemorating all year with new books, poetry readings, writing contests and even a bus tour through her hometown of Chicago, all inspired by her.
Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry, a libretto, and a novel, and has poems appear in Shot Glass Journal, Poetic Diversity, The Fib Review, The Galway Review + others. She has tutored at The Institute of Modern Languages [Cook University] and worked with Arts Action For Peace.
We call my mother Pollyanna. No matter how bad the weather, the argument, the traffic, or the grade, she will fervently insist that the glass is still half full.
I could have picked any number of wonderful poems, but the first that popped to mind was one I found five years ago in a poetry book I randomly bought at a used bookstore in Oakland. Anyway.
The tradition of the inaugural poet was started by John F. Kennedy in 1961 when he asked Robert Frost to do a reading. Frost had hoped to recite a poem called "Dedication," which he had written only a few days before the ceremony.
If Nietzsche was right about "what does not kill me," we're stronger now. Facing the darkness is the way forward "Peace, peace!" wrote Percy Shelley in the climactic stanza of his great poem about the death of his friend and rival, John Keats.
Several months ago, before the presidential election, San Francisco poet and author Dean Rader found himself engaged in a philosophical debate with some of his fellow poets: If Donald Trump were to win the presidency, and if he asked one of them to compose a poem to be read at the inauguration, would they do it? On the one hand, none of them supported Trump for the presidency. Rader didn't know many politically conservative poets, in general, and his friends found the prospect of Trump's election to be "terrifying" and offensive.