Random House Struik is running a James Patterson Short Story Competition for children between the ages of 9 and 12. The winner will receive R5000 and R10 000 worth of books for their school library, including all of James Patterson’s children’s books. The winner’s school will then get to nominate a disadvantaged school to also receive R10 000 worth of books for their library.
Children can choose one of these three titles for their fictional stories: “Ghost School”, “Feathers and Stars” or “The Magic Clock”. Entries must be in by 31 March 2013 and the stories must not exceed 1000 words.
Karina Magdalena Szczurek contributed to Louis Greenberg‘s collection of short stories, Home Away in which 24 writers write 24 stories set in 24 different cities around the world – a chapter for each hour of the day. In the latest issue of Wordsetc, Szczurek writes about being “At Home in China”:
Unexpectedly, it felt like a homecoming. Our Dragonair flight from Hong Kong to Beijing landed in the late afternoon. From the moment we left the Arrivals hall something in the air made me want to curl up inside myself and simply return to where we came from. And it was not the chilling wind; nor the constant drizzle.
The grey architecture’s sharp and unimaginative lines, the bleak atmosphere, the poverty and hopelessness of masses, the condescending attitudes of people in any kind of authoritative position, the schemers operating below the radar of the system, and the uncanny impression of being constantly watched as if surrounded by an omnipotent, unpredictably scary, presence – almost instantly I was transported back to the time I was growing up in Eastern Europe still under the thumb of communist rule, before the political changeover of the late 1980s. Something engrained in my bones, but dormant for so many years, resurfaced in recognition.
…and Louis Greenberg, in turn, supplies the thoughts of several of Home Away‘s contributors on their stories, in this key posting at LitNet:
Louis, you’ve edited this volume and also have a short story in the collection (“Last Chance at the End of the World”). It’s an unusual concept, asking a disparate group of writers to write a story about being away from home and setting each one at a different time in a different country. Can you tell me the genesis of this collection?
I’ve always been interested in questions of identity and questions of home and belonging. My grandparents were born in four different countries and had three different religions, and the result is a rather mixed-up person. As a child, I lamented this sense of rootlessness, of constant migration; I wished I could fit in somewhere. But more recently I’ve realised that in South Africa we all have these eclectic backgrounds, and what’s more, they add richness, they’re something to celebrate. I wanted, more than anything, in this collection, to complicate the simplistic polarities we’ve grown up with. Growing up in apartheid, we were encouraged to see things in black and white. Also, the world’s picture of South Africans is too comfortably homogenous. What better way to correct that impression than through 24 different voices?
Zebra Press is delighted to invite you to the Johannesburg launch of Home Away, the collection of contemporary South African writing edited by Louis Greenberg that takes readers around the world in twenty-four hours.
The Mail & Guardian published a longer excerpt of Moky Makura’s Home Away story than the one that you’ll find in the Scribd embed below. It’s situated in Nigeria and called “The Generator Man”. Enjoy this second taste!
With or without electricity, my favourite city in the entire world is not dissimilar to a series of quick, sharp slaps to the cheek. Once the initial shock is over, it’s an experience you won’t forget in a hurry and, although you can’t argue that it is fun at the time, you have to admit that it is probably unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.
And that’s Lagos. A city that’s as alive at 7am as it is at 7pm. A place where a day seems to last longer than the usual twenty-four hours, where at 7am you feel like you’re already halfway through it. The trick is to find ways of avoiding the sharp slaps that you know are coming.
My first slap of the day comes at 7.01. I wake up suddenly to the sound of a street fight brewing outside my open bedroom window. I listen intently; the fog of sleep quickly lifts and my mind and body are alert, ready for a day in Lagos.
Zebra Press brings you a preview of the exciting new collection of SA writing on hours and cities edited by Louis Greenberg, Home Away – launched recently in Cape Town.
This is the final excerpt: it’s 11pm and Victoria Burrows takes us to Hong Kong:
Zebra Press brings you a preview of the exciting new collection of SA writing on hours and cities edited by Louis Greenberg, Home Away – launched last week in Cape Town. Watch out for the first pages of each of the 24 stories, which will be run in hourly sequence every day.
It’s 10 PM and Rustum Kozain takes us to Royaumont, Paris:
Zebra Press brings you a preview of the exciting new collection of SA writing on hours and cities edited by Louis Greenberg, Home Away – launched last week in Cape Town. Watch out for the first pages of each of the 24 stories, which will be run in hourly sequence every day.
It’s 9 PM and Helen Moffett takes us to Fairbanks, Alaska:
Zebra Press brings you a preview of the exciting new collection of SA writing on hours and cities edited by Louis Greenberg, Home Away – launched last night in Cape Town. Watch out for the first pages of each of the 24 stories, which will be run in hourly sequence every day.
It’s 8 PM and Ivan Vladislavić takes us to Oklahoma City, USA:
Home Away – the world in one day, in a book; a collection of writing on hours and cities edited by Louis Greenberg – was launched at the Book Lounge last night to the expected standing-room-only crowd. (24 contributors – you knew it would be a big launch!) Book Lounge owner Mervyn Sloman called the collection “a gift to book shops and booksellers” and welcomed the Johannesburg-based Greenberg to his first Book Lounge experience – which, as he affirmed, he thoroughly enjoyed.
Greenberg described Home Away‘s format: 24 South African writers – exiles, immigrants, inziles – write about 24 cities at alloted hours, making up a single calendar day (and a read that will last a lifetime). The book takes on the wider theme of travel – see the suitcase on the stunning cover – and questions to what extent we ever feel at home.
While the book’s cover makes use of the suitcase, so do several of the stories: Colleen Higgs‘ “The Warm Arms of Kampala” begins with lost luggage, and read far enough into Richard de Nooy‘s “Stowaway” and you will discover that it is, in fact, narrated by a suitcase.
Greenberg’s aim for the collection was to “shatter perceptions” about South Africans, where white is white, black is black, and ideas about heritage extend only so far. Eight of the writers in the collection were present to read from their stories – including Greenberg, who was pressed by Lauren Beukes to read “Last Chance at the End of the World”, in what she called “an ambush reading”.
