Help raise funds for Read SA

Read SA invites you to “Meet the Writers” at a special event in London the day after the conclusion of the London Book Fair.

Join us at The Meat & Wine Co., Westfield London, on Thursday April 22 at 7pm (click here for map). Your hosts will be the South African writers Imraan Coovadia, Siphiwo Mahala, Angela Makholwa, Thando Mgqolozana, Kgebetli Moele, Ndumiso Ngcobo, Fiona Snyckers, Zukiswa Wanner and more!

Bookings are just £90 per person and include a three-course meal and seating at a writer’s table. All proceeds from the event go to Read SA, a registered non-profit organisation that aims to boost the profile of South African writing locally and abroad.

Write to ReadSouthAfrica@gmail.com for details and to book. We look forward to welcoming you in London!

By Louis Greenberg

Being South African isn’t as black and white as it used to be. People from all over the world make South Africa their home, while South Africans have more geographic freedom than ever before. This unique and captivating collection is a snapshot of South African writing today: emigrant and immigrant South Africans, living at home and away.

In Home Away, twenty-four chapters by twenty-four writers, set in cities all around the world, make up one global day, a mosaic reflecting on the nature of home. As the provocative stories in this collaboration suggest, often it’s when we are far away from home that we see it most clearly.

In Home Away, we’ve divvied up the world and a day into 24 hours shared between some of the hottest, most happening South African, immigrant and emigrant writers working today. All the writing in Home Away is orginal and unpublished, and honorary South African Vikas Swarup has written a lyrical foreword. It’s a fabulous range, a real document of South African writing today.

Here’s the brilliant line-up:

midnight: Zukiswa Wanner (Nairobi)
1 am: S.A. Partridge (Triolet)
2 am: Richard de Nooy (Amsterdam/Rokytnice nad Yizerou)
3 am: Sarah Britten (Sydney)
4 am: Naomi Nkealah (Mainz)
5 am: Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (Havana)
6 am: Colleen Higgs (Kampala)
7 am: Moky Makura (Lagos)
8 am: Sarah Lotz (Maun)
9 am: Louis Greenberg (Ushuaia)
10 am: Fiona Snyckers (Oxford)
11 am: Lauren Beukes (Tokyo)
noon: Ted Botha (Los Angeles)
1 pm: Liesl Jobson (Victoria / the air)
2 pm: Jassy Mackenzie (Moscow)
3 pm: Makhosazana Xaba (Dakar)
4 pm: Jo-Anne Richards (Patmos)
5 pm: Henrietta Rose-Innes (Chanchan)
6 pm: Kathryn White (London)
7 pm: Karina Magdalena Szczurek (Salzburg)
8 pm: Ivan Vladislavic (Oklahoma City)
9 pm: Helen Moffett (Fairbanks)
10 pm: Rustum Kozain (Royaumont)
11pm: Victoria Burrows (Hong Kong)

Home Away is published by Zebra Press in April 2010. All author and editor royalties are being donated to the Adonis Musati Project in the Western Cape and Kids’ Haven in Gauteng.

These organisations help address the humanitarian needs of refugee children and families and our donation is a small way for us to say that we too are all unrooted travellers filled with hope and fear, and that we empathise with their plight.

The recent merger of South Africa’s two most prominent book publishers, Random House and Struik Publishers, resulted in the formation of Random House Struik. The newly formed company is the largest general trade publisher in Southern Africa, and is now leading the way with creative writing education.

Random House Struik has partnered with Getsmarter, a specialist internet-based training company, to present the part-time Random House Struik Short Course in Creative writing. As the course is offered via the Internet, both local and international students will be accepted on the course.

The Random House Struik Short Course in Creative writing is a 10-week part-time course presented internationally in an internet-based distance learning format. The course is ideal for anyone who has dreamt of writing a novel or a short story as well as accomplished writers, fiction or non-fiction, who wish to bring more flair and drama to their work. The course is compiled and convened by American professional literary agent, editor and author Ron Irwin.

Getsmarter’s advanced and user-friendly learning model provides students with a personal and professional educational experience. Students work through the course material together mirroring a typical face-to-face classroom environment online and receive continuous academic and administrative assistance throughout the duration of the course.

Each of the 10 modules includes course notes; discussion forums where students interact with one another; an interactive “test your knowledge” quiz as well as video lectures to make the course material engaging. The course module titles include planning the story; the importance of beginnings; characters and characterization; plot vs. story; dialogue; point of view; conflict; and tying it all up.

In addition to the core coursework, students become part of a network of writers. This means that as the course progresses, students not only make friends with fellow writers; share creative writing pieces, contacts and ideas, but are also given the opportunity to review each others work and receive rich personal feedback on their work.

A further benefit of this course is that Random House Struik have committed to read and consider the top manuscripts from the course.

The course is due to start on the 22nd of February 2010 and registrations close on the 12th of February 2010. Please contact Karin on +27 21 683 3633 or karin@getsmarter.biz for further information.