This poem caused a deep excitement the first time I read it. An excitement and a recognition. Being from Africa I’m acutely aware of human rights, about some ‘birds’ being free and others not. And for me, human rights are encapsulated in the African greeting ‘I see you’. That is profound because the powerful never … Continue reading The caged bird
I am Africa, dark, mysterious, dangerous. At least that is what they tell me. I have disgorged my children all over the world. Although I love them the world has deemed them to be slaves. Their beautiful dark skins absorb my light, harsh to those not used to it. Their strong bodies dancing in war … Continue reading About Africa
Sometimes I just like to write down what I think. It clarifies my thought process. In this instance I wrote what beauty means to me. It is a work in progress. Now that I reread it I'm not sure what I'm trying to say 🙂 What do you think beauty is? Beauty is … Continue reading Thinking and writing
Francine Prose in her book Reading Like a Writer states “Like most–maybe all–writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.” A New York Times bestseller, Prose's work attracted reviews such as “An absolutely necessary addition to the personal library of anyone who is a writer or dreams of writing” (National Public Radio), … Continue reading Reading to feed your writing
One of my stories was published in Spelk
by Cornelia Fick
Aunt Janet choked on her beer, and then wagged a finger at her husband, Ted. “I hope the worms eat you ragged, you swine. I hope they start on your soft parts.”
“That was uncalled for,” her daughter, Elle, said.
Aunt Janet, Elle and two other women were sitting on kitchen chairs in a semi-circle under a peach tree. The meaty smoke from the barbeque enveloped them. They were celebrating Aunt Janet’s seventy-fifth birthday.
Once proud and beautiful, Aunt Janet had become a bony woman who couldn’t wait for the morning to put on her brown coat in search of brandy. Flecks of discoloured skin on her lips were wet with spittle. “He had a child with a woman in my church,” she continued. “He slept with all the women in the Mother’s Union.”
“He was a good father,” Elle said, desperate to believe in a man…
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Do you know how you hesitate to open an email from a magazine or journal where you've submitted your work because you can't stand the punched-in-the gut feeling when you read some of them? Especially when you're as brave as a mouse and each rejection letter makes your courage plummet and you ask, Why do … Continue reading The nicest rejection letter
It’s hard to see the flaws in our own work, and the ending is especially a problem. We know ourselves how it’s supposed to pack its punch, or we hope we do, but will the reader?
Here’s a handy test.
You’ve seen arrests in movies. And you know, don’t you, that a person may harm their defence if they don’t mention any evidence they later rely on in court.
This is like story endings.
A good ending
First of all, what’s a good ending? It has a feeling of ‘rightness’, even if it has surprises, leaves questions or unresolved issues. It must be fair (to the reader, not necessarily to the characters). It mustn’t look arbitrary.
When an ending fails, it’s usually because it wasn’t sufficiently set up.
It fails the arrest test.
Which is this:
It may harm your story’s effectiveness if you fail to mention any evidence (about events…
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Questions…. they’re the reason a reader gets intrigued by a story. And, at the author’s end, the writing process is an entire cycle of questions, big and small, some arising out of other questions. Some of the process is figuring out the right answers. Some of it is figuring out what to ask in the first place.
If that sounds like a conundrum, some of the most important questions are conundrums in themselves. Confused?
Today I’m at Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn blog, attempting to make sense of all this. Do come over.
PS If you’re curious about the latest doings of my own creative pen, here’s my latest newsletter
I love this poem about our history.
AiW Guest Toni Stuart
Africa in Words is thrilled to be able to share with you this audio-visual poem by Toni Stuart, an excerpt from her collection-in-progress Krotoa-Eva’s suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements.
Toni Stuart is a South African poet, performer and spoken word educator. You can find out more about her work here and read Matthew Lecznar’s interview with Toni for AiW here.
In this powerful, beautiful piece from Krotoa-Eva’s suite, Toni Stuart explores the history of the Cape through the figure of Krotoa-Eva. We are enormously grateful to Toni for sharing this extraordinary poem with us, and for writing the piece below explaining the context for the poem.
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photo by Jay Grabiec
Acclaimed writer, editor, professor and commentator Roxane Gay has been chosen as the new judge for the University of Georgia Press’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Gay follows Lee K. Abbott and Nancy Zafris as the latest distinguished writer to judge the Flannery O’Connor Award competitions.
Gay’s writing appears in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Harper’s Bazaar, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger: A Memoir of My Body.
Gay is also the author of World…
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Cornelia Smith Fick 