Novelists Aminatta Forna and Taiye Selasi were recently in an email conversation about the art and politics of walking in public as women of colour. Their conversation, published by Literary Hub and titled “Whose Streets?,” is a revealing, empowering response to an essay by Forna which appeared in Freeman’s magazine. Titled “Power Walking,” Forna’s essay […]
Tag Archives: aminatta forna
The Revealing Reason Why Aminatta Forna Likes Writing Male Characters
Last year, Somali writer and visual artist Diriye Osman, author of the Polaris Award-winning story collection Fairytales for Lost Children and the forthcoming novel We Once Belonged to the Sea, explained the concept of literary androgyny: that gender-straddling sensibility possessed by the best storytellers—women writing men, men writing women. But Aminatta Forna, from the interview […]
The 2018 Open Book Festival Begins in Cape Town
The 2018 Open Book Festival has begun at The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. The event, which is in its seventh year, will last from 5-9 September, with further activities at The District 6 Museum Homecoming Centre and The Book Lounge. Among the 2018 guests are Aminatta Forna, whose fourth novel Happiness dropped earlier in the […]
Five Beautiful Acts of Generosity by African Writers
In the midst of the pressure to deliver under that heavy tag “African Writer,” in the back and forth between critics and between writers and between critics and writers, in the midst of big novels and million-dollar book deals and accumulating prizes, it is easy to lose sight of community and what it means to […]
What Chimamanda Adichie, Taiye Selasi, Aminatta Forna and Kayo Chingonyi Are Reading This Summer
What do your favourite writers read during summer? Last year, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie read Isabel Wilkerson’s 2010 historical migration study The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration; and Imbolo Mbue read Jennifer Makumbi’s modern classic Kintu, alongside Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing; Naoki Higashida’s memoir of living with severe autism, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8; […]
Aminatta Forna’s Novel, “Happiness,” Is Out, and She Is on the Cover of Kirkus Reviews
Last November, we brought news of Aminatta Forna’s fifth book and fourth novel, Happiness. The book is now out, and after the first reviews, Forna is on the cover of Kirkus Reviews, the literary world’s leading magazine for book reviews. We are not in the least surprised as Forna is one of the most critically acclaimed fiction […]
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