Alert! The Open Book Festival has announced the first group of confirmed international and local authors for this year’s event.
The sixth annual Open Book will take place from 7 to 11 September in Cape Town.
This year’s festival will comprise more than 100 events, at The Fugard Theatre, the District Six Homecoming Centre and The Book Lounge.
The final programme will be available in early August, and tickets will be available on Webtickets.
“We are thrilled to be announcing the first group of authors for Open Book Festival 2016,” festival director Mervyn Sloman says. “We have confirmed participants joining us from Botswana, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Ghana, Holland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Reunion, United Kingdom and USA.
“As always we look forward to an outstanding collection of powerful South African writers talking about their work on the international stage that Open Book provides.
“I can’t wait to see the impact the likes of Pumla Dineo Gqola, Fred Khumalo, Bongani Madondo, Mohale Mashigo and Yewande Omotoso are going to have on Cape Town audiences. These writers are the tip of a very exciting iceberg that gives us cause for celebration in the SA book world that has many real and difficult challenges.”
Check out the confirmed international authors:
Adeiye “MC Complex” Tjon Tam Pau is a coach and workshop master for Poetry Circle Nowhere – a collective of writing performers in the Netherlands – and is active in the Dutch and international hip-hop scene.
Andy Martin is a lecturer in French literature and philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Most recently he published Reacher Said Nothing, a book about Lee Child writing his 21st Reacher novel, Make Me.
Benjamin Chaud was born in Briançon in the Hautes-Alpes and he studied drawing and applied arts at the Arts Appliqués in Paris and the Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. His award-winning books have been translated into over 20 languages.
Chigozie Obioma was born in Nigeria and is currently the professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His debut novel, The Fishermen, was an international hit.
Garth Greenwell‘s novella Mitko won the 2010 Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award. What Belongs to You is his debut novel.
Heather O’Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short-story writer, screenwriter and essayist. Lullabies for Little Criminals, her debut novel, was published in 2006 to international critical acclaim. She has since published the novel The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and the short story collection Daydreams of Angels.
Hippolyte resides in Reunion but was born and raised in the Alps, where he got his interest in comics by reading old American comic books. He gained success with his adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in two volumes by Vents d’Ouest in 2003 and 2004.
Indira Neville is a New Zealand comics artist, community organiser, editor and commentator. She has been making comics for over 20 years. Recently, she co-edited the anthology Three Words, a collection of Aotearoa/New Zealand women’s comics.
Jostein Gaarder is the author of several novels, short stories and children’s books, including Sophie’s World, which was translated into 60 languages and has sold over 40 million copies. His most recent novel translated into English is The World According to Anna.
Kim Leine is a Danish-Norwegian novelist. He received the Golden Laurel award and the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize for his novel, The Prophets of Eternal Fjord.
Lauri Kubuitsile lives in Botswana. She has written children’s books, short stories, novellas and several romance novels. The Scattering, her most recent novel, was published this year.
Martin Egblewogbe is a short story writer, lecturer in Physics at the University of Ghana and the co-founder of the Writers Project of Ghana. His short story “The Gonjon Pin” is the title story in the 2014 Caine Prize collection.
Journalist Michela Wrong has spent nearly two decades writing about Africa. In 2014 she was appointed literary director of the Miles Morland Foundation and is a trustee of Human Rights Watch Africa, the Africa Research Institute and the NGO Justice Africa. She is the author of a number of non-fiction books. Borderlines is her first novel.
Misha Glenny is a distinguished investigative journalist and one of the world’s leading experts on cybercrime and on global mafia networks. He is the author of several books, most recently Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio.
Nadia Hashimi‘s parents left Afghanistan in the 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. She was raised in the United States and in 2002 made her first trip to Afghanistan. Her debut novel, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, was an international bestseller. When The Moon Is Low followed in 2015 and her latest novel is due in 2016.
Nnedi Okorafor is an award-winning novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults. Her novella, Binti, recently won a prestigious Nebula Award.
Philip Teir is considered one of the most promising writers in Finland. His poetry and short stories have been included in anthologies, including Granta Finland. The Winter War is his first novel.
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He emigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His most recent novel, Carnival, won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Rosemary Sullivan is the author of 14 books, including biographies, children’s books and poetry. She is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. In 2012, she was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in Ontario and was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada (Canada’s highest civilian award) for outstanding contributions to Canadian Literature and Culture.
Sunil Yapa is the son of a Sri Lankan father and an American mother. He received his MFA from Hunter College in New York City in 2010, was awarded the Alumni Scholarship & Welfare Fund Fellowship, and was twice selected as a Hertog Fellow. He is the recipient of the 2010 Asian American Short Story Award. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is his first novel.
Book details
- Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me by Andy Martin
EAN: 9780593076620
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- The Bear’s Surprise by Benjamin Chaud
EAN: 9781452140285
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- The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
EAN: 9780957548862
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- What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
EAN: 9781447280514
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- Daydreams of Angels by Heather O’Neill
EAN: 9780857054029
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- Dracula by Hippolyte
EAN: 9781932413328
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- Three Words: An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ Women’s Comics edited by Indira Neville, Rae Joyce, Sarah Laing
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EAN: 9780994120502
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- The World According to Anna by Jostein Gaarder
EAN: 9780297609735
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- The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine
EAN: 9781782396673
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- The Scattering by Lauri Kubuitsile
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EAN: 9781485903079
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- The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories edited by Caine Prize
EAN: 9781431420261
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- Borderline by Mishell Baker
EAN: 9781481429788
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- Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio by Misha Glenny
EAN: 9781847922670
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- When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi
EAN: 9780062369611
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- Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
EAN: 9780765385253
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- The Winter War by Philip Teir
EAN: 9781781254899
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- Rape: A South African Nightmare by Pumla Dineo Gqola
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EAN: 9781920601522
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- Carnival by Rawi Hage
EAN: 9780241964903
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- Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan
EAN: 9780007491131
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- Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa
EAN: 9780316386555
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- The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
EAN: 9781784740344
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- Rape: A South African Nightmare by Pumla Dineo Gqola
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EAN: 9781920601522
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- Bitches’ Brew by Fred Khumalo
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EAN: 9781770091900
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- The Yearning by Mohale Mashigo
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EAN: 9781770104839
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- The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
EAN: 9781784740344
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- Sigh The Beloved Country: Braai Talk, Rock ‘n Roll and Other Stories by Bongani Madondo
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EAN: 9781770104952
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