Category: Long Reads
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Tsitsi Dangarembga: Feminist Survival in Conservative Society. (Feminart Arts and Book Festival keynote)
The Feminart Arts and Book Festival 2019 was hosted in venues around Lilongwe, Malawi from November 23-24, 2019. Here is the keynote by the festival headliner Tsitsi Dangarembga gave at the Crossroads Hotel on November 23, 2019. INTRODUCTION Good morning, everyone. I’m delighted to be at the Feminart Arts and Book Festival to speak on…
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Long Read: Nii Ayikwei Parkes keynote address at the Bare Lit Festival 2018.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes was the keynote speaker at the Bare Lit Festival 2018 giving the address at The Albany, London UK on May 27, 2018. We share the text here in full courtesy of the speaker. Let me start by inviting you to imagine: what would people who just campaign for Greenpeace be called if…
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Long Read: Judge Bernard Ngoepe gives Robert Sobukwe Lecture 2018 at Sol Plaatje University.
Judge Bernard Ngoepe gave the annual Robert Sobukwe Lecture 2018 at Sol Plaatje University on May 10, 2018. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was a prominent South African political dissident, who founded the Pan Africanist Congress in opposition to the South African apartheid system. The leader who died on February 28, 2018 has been having memorial lectures…
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Long Read: Chuma Nwokolo – Superstate Africa: Kenya, Somaliland, and the Ghost of Biafra Past.
Chuma Nwokolo gave a lecture “Superstate Africa: Kenya, Somaliland, and the Ghost of Biafra Past” at the Rift Valley Institute on September 28, 2017 as part of Storymoja Festival 2017. That festival was celebrating its tenth anniversary and had the theme of “Black Peace”. Chuma is the author of many books the most recent of…
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LONG READ: Short story writer Osemegbe Aito on speculative fiction
In the second of three interviews that we co-published with Black Letter Media we speak with Osemegbe Aito. Heaven is a busy market and in Osemegbe Aito’s Petrichor it’s not always clear if Paradise is a better alternative to hell or perhaps organized religion has been selling the whole idea of unbridled well-being wrong. A…
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LONG READ: Mary Ononokpono speaks about winning short story prize
Mary Ononokpono won this year’s edition of The Short Story is Dead, Long Live The Short Story! for her story Firewater. Disrupted trajectories characterize the multiplex world of her story, a firm study of social relationships as queuing networks, birth and death do not go hand in hand so smoothly, and complicated answers are ever…
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Long Read: Prof Niyi Osundare keynote at Lagos Book and Arts Festival 2017
In our continuing series on Long Reads for lovers of African literature, we present the keynote address at the Lagos Book and Arts Festival 2017 (Labaf 2017). The keynote given by festival guest of honour Prof Niyi Osundare followed the theme of Eruptions: Global Fractures, and Our Common Humanity. It was given on Friday, Nov.…
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LONG READ: Zainab Suleiman Okino on the challenges of publishing in Northern Nigeria
Zainab Suleiman Okino the Editor-In-Chief of Blueprint Newspapers made a presentation to members of Abuja Writers’ Forum on Saturday, the 28th of October, 2017. We have reproduced the whole presentation courtesy of our friends at the Abuja Writers’ Forum. SOCIAL MEDIA INCURSION AND THE CHALLENGES OF PUBLISHING IN NORTHERN NIGERIA By Zainab Suleiman Okino, Editor-In-Chief,…
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LONG READ: Man Of God by Sydney Majoko
In the continuation of our new series Friday Reads that we started with Paradise Within By Noo Saro-Wiwa we introduce a new long read. This Friday we introduce you to Johannesburg, South Africa resident Sydney Majoko’s new book The Webs We Weave which recently came into the market. Our long read is from Man of…
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LONG READ: Paradise Within By Noo Saro-Wiwa
We Introduce Long Reads a new concept that will feature every Friday here at JamesMurua.com. We start with Noo Saro-Wiwa’s nonfiction offering Paradise Within. Enjoy. One warm evening in the Sea Point neighbourhood of Cape Town, I learned the full extent of my ineffectiveness in a crisis. My acquaintance, Pieter de Westhuizen, was being manhandled…