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Mexico series: interview with poet Alberto Blanco
This is an edited extract from the text ‘The Heart of the Moment: An Interview with Alberto Blanco’ which was carried out by Kimberly A. Eherenman. It has been published in parts in The Bitter Oleander and in the magazine Fractal.
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African Literature to Look Out For In 2014
2013 was quite the year for African/African diaspora literature.
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Mexico series: interview with Sergio Téllez-Pon
Sergio Téllez-Pon (Mexico City, 1981) is a poet, essayist, literary critic and editor. His work has been published in various publications and newspapers in Mexico and abroad and translated into English, French and Portuguese.
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The Death of Gabriel García Márquez
On 17 April, Colombian author and Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez passed away at his home in Mexico City, aged eighty-seven. He has been described as one of literature’s all-time greats — what of the legacy he leaves behind?
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A conversation with Rotimi Babatunde
Rotimi Babatunde is the author of the short story ‘Bombay’s Republic’, winner of the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing.
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Five Minute Interview with Shiva Rahbaran
Shiva Rahbaran was born in Tehran. She was eight years old when the last Persian monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, left Iran giving way to the foundation of the Islamic Republic.
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Five Minute Interview with Louise Kennedy
Louise Kennedy grew up in Holywood Co. Down. She started writing in 2014. In 2015, she won both first place and runner up in Ambit Fiction Contest, and first place in Wasifiri New Writing Competition (Life Writing).
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The Triumphal Failings of West Africa: A Review of the Caine Prize 2013 Shortlist
The 2013 Caine Prize shortlist in making up for what it lacks in diversity (all five stories are by writers from West Africa), features remarkably relatable and topical themes: faith and disappointment, emigration and homecoming, religion and politics.
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A tale of two bookstores: Nigerian writing and its growth in the Western world
A tale of two bookstores: Nigerian writing and its growth in the Western world … Sola Njoku talks about the amazing resurgence of Nigerian writing over the past decade and some of the reasons for its success.
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An extract from 'Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction', edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
Wasafiri is delighted to feature a second exclusive extract from the exciting new anthology Safe House: An Anthology of Creative Nonfiction.
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New Beacon Book Club
The enthusiastic first meeting of the New Beacon Book Club took place on a wet March evening in North London. A group of readers met to discuss Foundations, the first volume of poetry by Trinidadian poet and erudite activist John La Rose.
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Celebrating Attia Hosain 1913-1998
In this piece, written to coincide with the centenary of Attia Hosain’s birth, Ritu Menon and Aamer Hussein, co-editors of a new collection of Attia’s fiction drawn from early and previously unpublished archival material, celebrate her enduring influence today.
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Maya Jaggi on NW
In a Guardian review twelve years ago of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, rather than hailing a fresh ‘voice’ in fiction, I doffed my hat as a fellow Londoner-born-and-bred to a thrillingly acute new ear.
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Nii Ayikwei Parkes on The Commonwealth Book Prize 2012
Overall winner and regional winner, Asia: Shehan Karunatilaka (Sri Lanka), Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (Random House) Regional winner, Africa: Jacques Strauss (South Africa), The Dubious Salvation of Jack V (Jonathan Cape) Regional winner, Canada and Europe:
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Review: The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai
How should novelists respond to, or engage with the rapid industrial and attendant cultural and social change which India is undergoing? It is hard to imagine the writer, Anita Desai, thinking, ah, a state of the nation novel is what is required.
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Revie - Migrations: Journeys into British Art
Reviewed by Michael McMillan Immigration is a politicised discourse in which immigrants tend to be demonised as aliens, different, strange, even dangerous – read ‘terrorist’ – others, rather than people contributing to the national culture and economy through their skills…
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Review: Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips’ seventh collection of essays, Colour Me English, revisits the author’s chosen territories of ‘displacement, home/homelessness, race and identity’, as defined by Renée Schatteman, editor of Conversations with Caryl Phillips  (2009). It is a volume heaving with insights…
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Bernardine Evaristo on One Day I Will Write About This Place
Binyavanga Wainaina won the Caine Prize for African Fiction in 2002 with his short story ‘Discovering Home’. He resurfaced three years later with his scathing, satirical essay ‘How to Write About Africa’ (Granta, 2005).
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Review: Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela
It’s the mid twentieth century, and British control over north east Africa is failing. Sudanese cotton tycoon Mahmoud Abuzeid, awarded the title Bey by Egypt’s King Farouk, is pulled between his two wives: They belonged to different sides of the saraya, to different sides of him.
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Selma Dabbagh on A God in Every Stone
Selma Dabbagh … A God in Every Stone … Kamila Shamsie … Bloomsbury, London, 2014, hb … 320pp  ISBN 1 4088 4720 6  £16.99 … www.bloomsbury.com/uk … ‘You are reading Kamila?’ asks Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte in the garden of Santa Maddalena – her writing retreat in Tuscany.
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Review: Hanif Kureishi Collected Stories
‘The chief problem for a story writer’, Kureishi recently wrote about American writer John Cheever, ‘particularly when it comes to a collection, is that of variety, especially if the reader wants to consume the stories in one go:
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Arifa Akbar on Marriage Material
Quintessential English classics have, before now, been adapted and re-shaped to tell diasporic and subcontinental stories, some more skilfully than others.
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Review: Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie
Storytellers are magicians. Twenty years after publication of his entrancing Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie has created a sequel in Luka and the Fire of Life.
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Helon Habila on Mr Loverman
In Mr Loverman, Bernardine Evaristo comes close to pulling off the perfect novel.
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