Arja Salafranca reading at the Melville Poetry Festival, October 2012

Home away from home

Cape Town - There are times when you feel like you’ve stepped out of your own world and into some alternative reality. A reality you could quite happily inhabit, if only the bank balance would follow suit. It helps that you’ve flown so many kilometres from the Big Smoke where you make your living, and you’re looking out at the view from your presidential suite.

The Sea Point Promenade is just beyond your window and the Atlantic Ocean splashing against the sea wall....Read more here

First cut is the deepest

There are many firsts beyond the obvious. The first time he comes bounding through your front window wearing a leather jacket at the start of winter, a jacket that you will remember through the years, the feel of it, and what it all meant. The first time you stay up till three, four in the morning, talking, and then more...Read more here

At the launch of donga, De La Creme, Melville, Johannesburg, August 7, 2012

With Frank Meintjies

Reading from donga

Photos: Michelle McGrane

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