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The Survivor and the Conquering Spirits of Sadjio

March 15, 2021March 16, 2021 admin2Book review, Liberian, Writer0 comment

By Fatoumata Nabie Fofana Publisher: Adelaide Books 244 Fifth Avenue Suit D27 New York, NY 10001 311 pp. Reviewed by Nvasekie N. Konneh The life we live, where we live, those we interact with on the daily basis are all stories by themselves. The more we live, the more stories there are about us or others we interact with. In this case, everyone has stories to tell, either orally or literarily. On one occasion or another, many of our stories are told orally to our friends and relatives. The oral stories take…

Wilton Sankawulo, www.liberianlistener.com

Tributes

Tribute: Writer, Wilton Sankawulo, 1937—2009

January 29, 2021 admin2Liberian Listener, Wilton Sankawulo, Writer0 comment

Wilton Sankawulo began earning his fame as a prolific Liberian writer in the 1970s. He was born on 26 July, 1937 in Haindi, Bong County, Republic of Liberia, unto to the blessed union of Dougba and Naisua Sankawulo. He began his educational pursuit at Kpalopele, Lutheran Mission, near Haindi, in Bong County, where he received his initial and elementary training. He first enrolled at the Totota Lutheran School, and later continued at Sanoyea Lutheran School, where he completed his Junior High Education. He moved to Lofa County and attended the Lutheran Training Institute (LTI) in Salayea, Lofa County, from which…

Her first novel Nervous Conditions won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989. Other award-winning credits include Neria, Zimbabwe's most successful film released in 1993. Her latest book, This Mournable Body, is on the Booker Prize longlist, which was unveiled earlier this week. It is a sequel to Nervous Conditions, and "channels the hope and potential of one young girl and a fledgling nation to lead us on a journey to discover where lives go after hope has departed", the Booker Prize website says.***

News

Famed Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga released on bail

August 2, 2020 admin2corruption, Writer, Zimbabwe0 comment

Tsitsi Dangarembga, an award-winning Zimbabwean author and Booker Prize nominee, has been released on bail after her arrest during an anti-government protest. Eleven other people detained on Friday – including Fadzayi Mahere, a lawyer and spokeswoman for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance party – were also freed on Saturday. They were ordered to return to court on September 18. Dangarembga was charged with incitement to commit violence and breaching anti-coronavirus health regulations after staging a two-woman demonstration in the capital on Friday, the day of planned protests against corruption…

Public Policy

Who is Tsitsi Dangarembga?

August 1, 2020 admin2Detained, Writer, Zimbabwe0 comment

BBC—Award-winning Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga, a nominee for this year’s Booker Prize, has been arrested in the country’s capital, Harare, during an anti-government protest. Dangarembga, 61, and another protester were bundled into a police lorry while carrying placards. The government has warned that participation in Friday’s demonstration is regarded as insurrection. Police and soldiers are patrolling cities where streets are mainly empty. BBC Africa Live: Updates from across the continent**** Seven babies die in one night at Zimbabwe hospital*** ‘Our only radiotherapy machine broke during my treatment’*** Opposition parties…

Op-ed

I might have been better on a hilltop in Nepal

July 2, 2020July 3, 2020 admin2Dag Walker, Ecuador, Writer0 comment

Introduction: Dag Walker is an amazing writer traveling the world, who currently finds himself in Quito, Ecuador, where he enjoys the beautiful weather far from his own home– in North America. In the mountains and hills of his current residence, he finds time, and solace to contemplate writing and structuring his thoughts as he pound ideas we need in a world that seeks to self destruct, writing that he is “hopeful”! Walker wrote this short essay as— a reflection of what writers go through before they get published, but also…

Janetta Marilyn Konah is a Liberian Poet and Author of "Beautiful Pieces" a poetry chapbook published on Amazon. She writes themes that explore the full range of human emotions, nature, life, and society. Her writing has appeared in KWEE, a Liberia Literary Magazine where she was featured as Author of the month of January 2020. She is a member of the reading literary team, Monrovia Reads, and WeWrite Liberia, where she gets to hone your creative passion for both writing and reading. The author lives in Monrovia where she moves through her daily life on the wings of poetry.

Interviews

Interview : Janetta Marilyn Konah, Liberian Poet and Author

February 19, 2020February 19, 2020 admin2Liberia, poet, Writer0 comment

Janetta Marilyn Konah is a Liberian Poet and Author of “Beautiful Pieces” a poetry chapbook published on Amazon. She writes themes that explore the full range of human emotions, nature, life, and society. Her writing has appeared in KWEE, a Liberia Literary Magazine where she was featured as Author of the month of January 2020. She is a member of the reading literary team, Monrovia Reads, and WeWrite Liberia, where she gets to hone your creative passion for both writing and reading. The author lives in Monrovia where she moves…

Society Arts & Leisure

Jockk Brand vs. the Man at the Top of the Stairs: excerpts from a Novel

February 17, 2020February 17, 2020 admin2Dag Walker, Jockk Brand, Writer0 comment

Jockk Brand vs. the Man at the Top of the Stairs and Other Men Hiding in the Shadows in the Garden Evening. Icy Cafe, Street of the Monkeys, Phom Phen. By Dag Walker By 9:00 p.m the temperature had dropped to the low 100s in the city. Seated on a quiet back street outside of Icy Cafe, a small group of young backpackers and a few older ex-pats sat sipping beer and rum and smoking endless cigarettes, sweating heavily under the dim pig-tail light bulb above the low doorway of…

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongio will succeed Vinton Cerf, known for being one of the fathers of the Internet. Cerf was the first technologist to receive the prize, with other awarded figures including the philosopher Karl Popper, oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, politician Václav Havel, writer Doris Lessing, and activist Malala Yousafzai. The prize will be awarded to the Kenyan author during the first quarter of 2020 at a ceremony chaired by Catalan president Quim Torra.

Artists & Reviews

Kenyan writer and activist Ngugi wa Thiong’o wins Catalonia International Prize

December 31, 2019 admin2Africa, Ngugi, Writer0 comment

The Kenyan writer and activist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been awarded the 31st Catalonia International Prize given by the Catalan government, “for his distinguished and courageous literary work and his defense of African languages, based on the notion of language as culture and collective memory.” “Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is one of the most prolific and renowned African writers,” reads the jury’s communiqué. “In all the genres he cultivates – novels, essays, memoirs, theatre – he combines the most profound African traditions with a sensitive yet merciless description of the social…

Ms. Golakai and her co-winners, Gloria M. Odari, Parselelo Kantai, and Nnamdi Oguike will each receive a grant of €18,000 to allow them to take a year off to finish the Spectral novel. “Spectral is a terrifying examination of the tensions between freedom and social order. It will have speculative fiction themes: fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism. I love mixing science with fantastical and unknown,” Ms. Golakai said about the upcoming book.

Artists & Reviews

Liberian Writer Golakai Wins 2019 Morland Writing Scholarship

December 1, 2019 admin2Liberian, Literature, Writer0 comment

Liberian Author Hawa Jande Golakai has emerged as one of the four joint winners of the prestigious Morland Writing Scholarships for her work Spectral. Ms. Golakai, a speculative fiction author and a professional medical immunologist, is the first and only Liberian to win the Morland scholarship prize since its inception in 2013. Ms. Golakai and her co-winners, Gloria M. Odari, Parselelo Kantai, and Nnamdi Oguike will each receive a grant of €18,000 to allow them to take a year off to finish the Spectral novel. “Spectral is a…

Coates grew up in a home and a world where consciousness in thought and deed was the ultimate reflection of what it means to be a human being, where books and papers surrounded him and reflected him. He sought other stories in comic books and novels. Baltimore in the ’80s demanded a different education of him, one where he was bored by teachers, fell asleep in class, walked through the streets assessing the landscape and the people incessantly, wary and aware that at any moment, at any time, he could be jumped and beaten for any number of imagined offenses by boys who looked like him. That world trained Coates to navigate violence with his body and his mind, pressured his inner self to become the man he is today, a man with a baby face and easy bearing whose looks belie the weapon within, a self honed to a scythe’s sharpness.

Artists & Reviews

The Beautiful Power of Ta-Nehisi Coates

August 19, 2019 admin2Books, Ta Nehisi Coates, Writer0 comment

With his groundbreaking nonfiction works, Ta-Nehisi Coates emerged as our most vital public intellectual. Now, his debut novel, The Water Dancer, takes him to uncharted depths. BY JESMYN WARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ AUGUST 6, 2019 Coates, photographed in Brooklyn.PHOTOGRAPH BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ. When I meet Ta-Nehisi Coates, I am surprised. All of the photos I’ve seen of him are somber and inscrutable, but when I walk into the café where he’s suggested we meet, he’s not like that at all. He’s one of those people who looks young at any age:…