2012 Farafina Workshop participants

The voice: let me get home before its dark

Stalled vehicles honked in the yellow glow of the midday sun. Their drivers, the ones with no air conditioning, stuck their necks out to spew forth words peppered with profanities. Some turned off their engines, quietly seething behind their steering wheels. Exhaust belching Okadas tried in vain to wind their way through the confusion.  Some drivers, unable to contain their exasperation, spilled out of their heated vehicles and surged towards the source of the gridlock. But then they already knew what the problem was –   motorists had gotten wind of the arrival of a petrol tanker at a nearby filling station, the first to come in three days. So they had been left with no option but to clog up the streets in their search for scarce fuel.  The acrid smell of petrol and burning rubber filled the air

Not too far from the gas station, near a record store with a monstrous speaker blaring afro beats- some Fela wannabe – a great babel of pedestrians poured in and out of the food market. There were trudging load carriers, groaning under the weight of bags of foodstuff, sweat washing down their bodies, their guttural voices telling people to get out of the way. There were cart pushers carrying piles of farm produce from the market;  handicapped beggars on wheel-fastened boards,   impostors feigning disability, and hospital reports, speaking of ridiculous afflictions; yellow skinned mendicants from Niger shuffling after their prospective benefactors, stubborn as leeches; truant school boys pooling away their pocket money at gambling points and barefoot hawkers, trays balanced on their heads with high-pitched voices calling out to prospective customers and hard, sun beaten faces. Theses ones milled about, hoping to benefit from the jam, dangling whatever they had to sell. There were traders with makeshift stalls lining the road, measuring out bowls of grains while their grimy tots lapping at their bone-dry breasts.

Read more HERE

My favourite five

 

Famished Road by Ben Okri
Famished Road, in my opinion, is one of the best novels to have come out of the Africa. The 1991 Booker winner is the story of Azaro, an abiku who is constantly coming and going between our world and the spirit-world thus returning to the world of the unborn months or years after birth. Azaro struggles against the collective wish of his spirit companions and stay on in the physical form, drawn by the wonders of the earth. He still maintains his connections with the spirit world and oscillates dangerously between the two worlds. His companions try to bring him back to their world. The language in this novel is incredibly rich, the imagery superb and the characters so memorable. I love the fact that the story brings to life the Yoruba mythical tradition in a distinctive brand of magical realism and captures the chaos, poverty and violence of post-colonial Nigeria

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Another Booker Prize winning novel, Disgrace tells a story of Professor’s affair with a student and its repercussions. I was drawn by Coetzee’s skillful, highly economical writing style and fluid plot. A melancholic book, Disgrace is full of the moral complexities such as it is found in the real world.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
This page-turner is about a young boy’s clandestine love affair with an older woman, and what happens to them both when the secrets in her past are revealed. The book is easy to read and deeply moving and I love its connection with the Holocaust.

1984 by George Orwell
George Orwell’s classic 1984 is a very descriptive novel. It conveys horrifying but important truths in a calm voice. It’s about the dangers of creating a utopian society. I totally love this book!

The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
I remember laughing all through! I was amused by the corruption, the poverty, the resilience of the human spirit. It’s the story of a nameless man who struggles to remain clean when everyone else around him has succumbed to ‘rot’. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

see link here

The voice : On Being a Writer

Monday, 18 June 2012

Samuel Kolawole: On Being a Writer

 

Samuel Kolawole, author of a collection of short stories The Book of M, writes about what it means to be a published writer. He was at GCLF for the first time in 2009; since then, it has been an annual pilgrimage for him. We will publish an excerpt of his work-in-progress next week.

 

I am an enthusiast of the written word. I do not really enjoy giving readings, though flattered at the requests to do so. It’s one thing to write, it’s another thing to perform what you have written. That’s what I think readings are, performances of the written word. Writing provides for me a way of hiding while concocting tales that will hopefully travel beyond my personal space; readings, on the other hand, take me out of that space.

 

I try to find the clearest, most engaging way of telling stories. I conjure up things and discard them. I toil. I fine-tune my sentences. I look for that missing thread, that magical connection that transforms a narrative into a delight. I am wary of giving too much credence to my work, but I can’t but be fascinated by the idea that I have created a fantasy someone can live in, even for just a moment.

Read the complete piece here

 

New fiction on short story day Africa

The goal of Short Story Day Africa is to celebrate African short fiction. Amongst other things, it seeks to highlight the outstanding short fiction Africa has to offer. My story “How fortune smile on Fortunatus” featured there. Enjoy!

Congratulations Jungle Jim!

Enlarge Share 0 Comment

Breaking News: CAINE PRIZE SHORTLIST

Jungle Jim is proud to announce that our very own Constance Myburgh has been shortlisted for the prestigious CAINE PRIZE, Africa’s leading literary award, with JJ’s in-house detective, HUNTER EMMANUEL (Issue 6, 2011).

The news was announced today by Ben Okri, and the 5 shortlisted stories can be read on the Caine Prize’s website. And of course, accompanying Hunter Emmanuel are illustrations by Hannes Bernard!

Salut!

Jungle Jim Issues 1-11 will be up on Amazon Kindle IMMINENTLY! Watch this space or this space for news!

Musing en Male

Join me as I read from my new story collection “The Book of M”

Time	24 September · 14:00 – 17:00
Location	Debonair Bookstore 294, Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba. Lagos, Nigeria

Tea with George

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been  picked as next month’s “Tea with George” author. Tea With George is a new online project from Desperanto and Kanev Books interested in showcasing the amazing talent of writers of poetry and short stories.

Ten Things I’ve Learned over 12 Years of Sending Out Stories By Josh Rolnick

 

1. Mark Farrington, my first writing teacher at the Johns Hopkins MA Program in Writing in the fall of 1998, suggested we should start sending our stories out “when they are as good as we can make them.” That may seem obvious, but I’ve found it to be a great rule of thumb. Perhaps you’ve had several rounds of feedback, you’ve revised, and while you still see problems, you don’t know how to fix them. When you’ve taken a story as far as you can on your own, send it out.

2. Send stories out broadly – ten to twenty journals at a time. This is particularly important if, over time, you hope to receive useful feedback. Since sending my first story out in January, 1999, I’ve sent to 225 journals, contests, or competitive retreats; I’ve received 219 rejections and had six stories published. But I’ve received some kind of encouragement – from formal letters to “send more” checked on a postcard – from 71 publications, about one-third of all my submissions.

3. Aim high. Make a list of the top tier journals you’d love to have your story published in, then start at the top and move down. I submitted my very first story in 1999 to 12 places, including the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Zoetrope, and Virginia Quarterly Review. While the odds are very low, any feedback you receive can keep you going.

4. Another of Farrington’s suggestions I’ve tried to follow religiously over the years: Send only to journals that pay – however little. Sure, writers should be paid for their work, but this is not just a question of principle. Payment (cash – not contributor’s copies) signifies an added seriousness, a heightened commitment to the piece being published. Using pay as a guide crisply sorts journals into two categories: those that do; those that don’t. While there are certainly serious, respectable journals that don’t or can’t pay, by and large payment is an efficient surrogate for quality.*

5. Send smartly. Read a journal’s submissions guidelines. Pay attention to page limits and manuscript needs. Don’t send to AGNI in July. Don’t send Fence a hard copy manuscript (they only take electronic). Most writers I know don’t read all the journals they send to in advance. But at the very least familiarize yourself with a journal’s unique pulse before sending, or take your lumps. Perhaps the most embarrassing (and humbling) rejection I received came from the Chariton Review, then published through the English Department at Brigham Young University: “Sorry – but we can’t consider anything with an f word in it. You surely must know that BYU is church-sponsored.”

6. Find out which journals respond personally to your work, and keep sending them stories. Even if they never take one, you’re likely to get a steady stream of feedback. Keep a file, tabbed by journal, of all the responses you receive – whether a letter from an editor or a form “send again” card; good, bad, or otherwise – so you can track them over time.

7. When you get a positive response, always reference it when sending your next story. Do this even if all you’ve received is a scribbled, unsigned “nice work” or an auspicious check mark. Sometimes, someone will initial their comments. Take the time to look them up online, and address your next story to them. I’ve started many letters: “Thank you for your encouraging note about my last story…” This immediately establishes your relationship with the journal, and can help lift your story off the slush pile.

8. Don’t take rejection personally. Every writer knows this, and yet it’s one of the toughest things to truly internalize. I once received an email from the Paris Review that felt, well, pretty personal: “I just finished ‘Innkeeping’ … I found it able but not, to be honest, terribly distinctive, and the tone sort of YA – not for us, I’m afraid.” I consider myself fairly well steeled, and, still, the email stung. Less than two months later, though, I received another email, from Field Maloney at the New Yorker: “I want to apologize for our taking so long to get back to you on ‘Innkeeping.’…I enjoyed reading this one – the voice is natural and distinctive – and I’d be glad to read more of your fiction in the future.” I keep both notes in their separate files, with a Post-It note on the Paris Review comments, reminding me of the New Yorker’s.

9. If you are fortunate enough to get a story accepted, immediately write or email the other journals where the story is still under consideration, letting them know your story has been placed.

10. Celebrate rejection. I’m not kidding. Each rejection is a chance you gave your story to live in the minds of readers; each, an opportunity to toughen your writerly skin. Mark milestone rejections by subscribing to the journal that didn’t take you. I did this when I received my 200th rejection – and in so doing, I owned the rejection, instead of letting it own me. Now, each month when One Story arrives, I’m reminded of my triumph.

*I recently contacted Farrington, still an instructor and faculty adviser at Hopkins, to run this piece by him. He said while he still recommends writers submit to journals that pay, he offered this addendum: “Sometimes there will be a story that you sincerely believe is finished – it doesn’t need to be revised, or put on a shelf for awhile, it is what it is – but it’s not a story that’s had success with the top tier journals. That’s a story I would feel absolutely fine about sending to a journal that doesn’t pay.”

MOSURO THE BOOKSELLERS presents LAIPO READS

Be there!

 

Time:    03 September · 15:30 – 17:30

Location: NSIAC (Nigerian Society for Information on Arts and Culture), 54, Magazine Road, Jericho, Ibadan.

 

Featuring Jude Dibia (Blackbird), Ayodele Arigbabu ( A Fistful of Tales), Sylva Nze Ifedigbo (The funeral Did Not End), Odili Ujubuonu ( Pride of the Spider Clan). There shall be special appearance by Femi Osofisan. Come and mingle with great minds like yours.

Ibadan l’o mo, oo mo L’AIPO!