Showcase for SA short fiction by Maureen Isaacson

Published ahead of the South African Short Story Day is The Edge of Things: South African short fiction, selected by Arja Salafranca, the editor of Sunday Life.

It is a special edition of the literary journal Green Dragon, which Salafranca, says has been published annually since the early 2000s. Salafranca said she suggested that this particular edition, dedicated to the short story, serves “to highlight the importance of this genre, increasingly coming into its own in this country”.

The result is 24 pieces, “some of which qualify as short stories, others more like prose poems and descriptions of emotional experiences”, according to the Cape Times.

The book includes the stories of a range of writers, some well known, including Margie Orford, Liesl Jobson, Karina Magdalena Szczurek, Rosemund Handler, Hamilton Wende, Aryan Kaganof, Hans Pienaar and Salafranca herself, as well as those new to their craft, including Beatrice Lamwaka.

Salafranca’s debut short story collection The Thin Line was published by Modjaji Books last year. She has published two collections of poetry, A life Stripped of Illusions and The Fire in Which We Burn. Her poetry is also collected in Isis X (Botsotso).

Salafranca received the 2010 Dalro Award for poetry and has twice received the Sanlam Award, for fiction and poetry.

The Edge of Things, published by Dye Hard Press, costs R185.

(Published in The Sunday Independent, June 26, 2011)