Day: July 21, 2012 | Chimurenga

It Begins with a Place

t would be a very idiosyncratic Harlem! Years ago when I was a teenager I did a course where they had us make maps of places, highlighting what drops out just based on personal experience of a place. I think of this book very much like that – a personal map of the places I went or that caught my eye.

Asia in My Life

I have always felt the need for Africa, Asia and South America to learn from each other. This south-to-south intellectual and literary exchange was at the center of the Nairobi Literature debate in the early sixties, and is the centerpiece of my recent theoretical explorations, in Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing.

The Spark of Life: Where Novels Come From

wani? Manuscript Project, Kwani Trust’s new literary prize for African writing. Including contributions from Aminatta Forna, Leila Aboulela, Ellen Banda-Aaku and Helon Habila, the articles offer advice and inspiration for developing your novel manuscript over the next 2 months. In this, the first article in the series Aminatta Forna explores where the ideas for novels.

Ten Pieces of Advice for the Writing Life

Read to become a better writer. This sounds like “eat to become stronger” and in a way reading is the food of the creative process. Read for all the reasons a reader reads but also read for inspiration, read to be influenced, read in order to pick up tricks and techniques, read in order to answer the questions, “How on earth did the author pull this off? How on earth did he/she get away with this?”