I chatted to Bruce Dennill of The Citizen recently:
Margie Orford often gets accused of writing “popular fiction”, where that term is used in a disparaging sense by snotty literary types.
Orford thinks that’s ridiculous.
“I taught publishing and literary theory at the University of Namibia,” she says.
“The students there had English as a third or fourth language, but they managed, which was an epiphany for me. You can present complex ideas to intelligent people and they won’t be uncomfortable with it.
“Writing ‘popular fiction’ deflates that whole ivory tower thing where language hides what I’m really thinking.”
Read the complete article.
I just got a copy of Andrew Brown’s new book, Street Blues. It’s about his time as a police reservist. I have Patricia Cornwell’s new book too but I think Andrew’s is going to be first….
The cover of the French edition of Like Clockwork has arrived - the title translates to Captives of the Dawn, which I rather like.
The Cape Town Book Fair was full of talk about crime. True crime, imaginary crime, writing crime. I was part of a very lively panel with Deon Meyer, Richard Kunzman and Mike Nicol. Lauren de Beer of The Weekender was there too. Read her crime wrap here: http://www.businessday.co.za/weekender/article.aspx?ID=BD4A786925
‘Writing soothes stomach knots’ or so my agent tells me…
I take a pen and clutch
It hoping that the fear
Will go
It won’t. I know that
Yet still I take the pen and
run it across the supine
pages watching me
Blankly. Waiting
For thoughts to imprint
Themselves. Memorable.
Contained. Complete.
So I ask
My pen to take upon it
the displaced task
That I signed up for: Fill
these pages with
Desire love grief and
the invisible sound of
black hair tumbling
over a child’s plump cheek.
I’ve just heard the news that Fifteen Men will feature as part of Minister of Prisons Nconde Balfour’s budget speech in Parliament tomorrow.
One of the book’s contributors, Michael Dakets, will be transported from the Groot Drakenstein Prison to Parliament to read from the book. I’m trying to wangle an official invite to the speech, so I can present the minister with a copy of the book.
Media will apparently be out in force - watch for coverage!
Isobel Dixon, my WonderWoman agent at Blake Friedmann in London has just wrapped up some fab new deals for me in the UK, Spain and South Africa. Here is her announcement… (more…)
Blood Rose has been longlisted for the Sunday Times fiction prize. I am thrilled! Like Clockwork was on the longlist too, so lets see what happens. There is a J M Coetzee on the list, a Zakes Mda and some wonderful new writers - like Ceridwen Dovey - with her magical realist fable, Blood Kin.
Andrew Donaldson of the Sunday Times covered the launch of Fifteen Men - prison writing generated during a 9-month workshop that I facilitated at Groot Drakenstein Prison last year.
It’s called “Broken voices from the inside” and here’s an excerpt, below.
Details of how and where to buy the book coming soon.
(more…)
I am so ashamed and sickened by the murderous violence that has gripped parts of South Africa and that is spreading like a noxious cancer.
A MEDITATION ON SOUTH AFRICAN CITIZENSHIP
If being a South African means beating on the red door of a shack and demanding to see a green identity book – the dompas of citizenship, then I am a foreigner.
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