An urban fantasy

I’m sitting in what feels like a bachelor pad on the 16th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel & Spa. I’ve just been kindly escorted to my hotel – a long story that includes not taking proper directions or noting names of streets. So, at the garage, playing damsel in distress I’m asking where to go and looking suitably confused, when a man eating a pie, filling up with petrol, says it’s not far, and personally escorts me there....Read more here

Out in Africa 2012: a review

With the second leg of the Out in Africa festival now showing, the highlight for me was the headline act, Cloudburst. This stars big names Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker as two women who have been together for 31 years, co-habiting Dot’s home somewhere near the US/ Canadian border.

When the blind Dot (Fricker) falls out of bed and sprains her bottom, it’s apparently the beginning of the end of their life together. Her granddaughter Molly (Kristin Booth) sets in motion a plan to commit Dot to a frail-care facility, convinced that the 80-year-old Stella (Dukakis) can no longer care for her “special friend”...Read more here

Arja Salafranca and Yvonne Fontyn, Jozi House of Poetry, Johannesburg, July 2012

Arja Salafranca and Michelle McGrane, Jozi House of Poetry, Johannesburg, July 2012

The Thin Line is long-listed for the 2012 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa

The Lumina Foundation has released the long list for the 2012 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, and Arja Salafranca's short fiction collection, The Thin Line, has been nominated.
The short list will be announced in August. Read more here

A Car is a Weapon

“Eight thousand rand.” 

She takes a sip of tea. “It’s eight thousand rand to get a driver’s licence. And it’s two thousand five hundred to get a learner’s.”

“You’re not serious,” I say, “you’re not really going to do it.”

She shrugs, smiles, in her strange accented English she says, “You know I need a licence. Without it I can’t get a better job. It’s easier this way, quicker. I could wait years otherwise. What if I don’t pass my test?”

Pauli swallows the last of her tea, looks at her watch, another half an hour remaining before her lunch hour is over. She’s talking on condition of anonymity...Read more here

Launch of Inheriting the Earth: Jill Nudelman Discusses Her Debut Novel

The launch of Jill Nudelman’s Inheriting the Earth was held on 18 June at The Book Lounge in Cape Town. Adele Branch from UKZN Press welcomed the audience and introduced Nudelman and Arja Salafranca, who joined her at the launch to discuss the book.

The discussion started with Salafranca reading a précis of the book which is about Rose, a girl who was orphaned at a young age and adopted. She knows nothing about her biological family until her foster mother dies and she inherits a fortune along with a box of artefacts that provide her with clues to her ancestry... Read more here

The Edge of Things and The Thin Line on display at the Cape Town Book Fair 2012

The Edge of Things: South African Short Fiction, was published by Dye Hard Press in 2011 and The Thin Line was published by Modjaji Books in 2010. 

Celebrating Short Story Day at the Cape Town Book Fair

Rachel Zadok (author of Gem Squash Tokoloshe and organiser of Short Story Day Africa) and Colleen Higgs (author of the short story collection, Looking for Trouble and publisher at Modjaji Books) will chat to Arja Salafranca (poet, journalist, and author of short story collection The Thin Line) about Short Story Day Africa at the Cape Town Book Fair on Friday, June 15 2012... Read more here