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

Arja Salafranca talks to Dawn Garisch at the launch of Eloquent Body, at Love Books, Melville, June 6 2012

Photo: Love Books

Arja Salafranca reading at The Jozi House of Poetry, June 3 2012

Photo: Natalia Molebatsi

A-Twitter about books, talks and tweets

At best, what you’re left with after attending this dynamic yet intimate writers’ festival is an overwhelming swirl of words, sensations and stimulation enough to take you through the next few weeks. Plus, of course, an oversized suitcase weighted with the number of books you’ve bought after having listened to the various authors.

You also leave, perhaps, with a sense of loss and sadness. The charms of Franschhoek are beguiling – the village set within a valley offers an intimacy to the fest not provided when a writers’ fest takes place in a bigger city. You ditch the car, if you even hired one, and walk everywhere, day or night – it’s small enough for that...Read more here

Arja Salafranca at the Franschoek Literary Festival 2012

From left: Joanne Hichens, Arja Salafranca, Colleen Higgs, (Unknown), Tracey Farren and Yewande Omotoso.

Photo: BooksLive

Bloggers and wine at Mount Grace

I’m sitting at The Rambling Vine restaurant at the Mount Grace Hotel in the Magaliesberg. I’ve been invited on a blogging weekend, of bloggers and partners and friends. We have our own hashtag: #mountgraceblog for Twitter and the cellphone flashes start as soon as the first course is served. If ever there was a weekend that was going to be preserved for posterity, this is it.

Also at the table a blogger who maintains no less than three accounts, has his iPad out among the silver cutlery and fine dining plates. Hard core about his blogging, he informs us midway through the eight-course meal that Cosatu’s just released a press release about the e-tag debacle...Read more here