Mail&Guardian Johannesburg Literary Festival takes place from 3 September 2010
The inaugural Mail&Guardian (M&G) Johannesburg Literary Festival will be held from Friday 3 September to Sunday 5 September 2010 at 44 Stanley Avenue in Melville.
It is in the tradition of the Weekly Mail's Book Week and also helps mark M&G's 25th birthday.
The festival began with former editor Ferial Haffajee who set out to acknowledge the publishing houses, authors and readers in Johannesburg.
Nic Dawes, Haffajee's predecessor takes this festival forward, and hopes to revive Jo'burg's cultural landscape.
The theme for this year is Being Here Now (Who are we? South Africans in 2010).
Poets, playwrights and prose writers battled apartheid with words, ignoring or evading restrictions through their writing, in order to convey truths and consider possible futures for SA.
Sixteen years into SA's democracy the freedom of information, expression and opinion is under threat.
M&G has been a forerunner in the past and in this instance it is no different - the M&G Johannesburg Literary Festival serves as a platform for the discussion of such issues as well as an acknowledgement of the calibre of writers in South Africa.
Johannesburg boasts the highest number of book sales in the country; the M&G Johannesburg Literary Festival will give book lovers the opportunity to meet with and listen to speeches by South African authors and other prominent people in the industry.
Highlights include the panel discussion Being Here: South Africans in 2010, and the announcement of the winners in non-fiction and fiction of the Penguin Prize for African writers.
Nic Dawes, Professor Craig Mackenzie (Professor of English, University of Johannesburg), Professor David Attwell (Professor, Post Colonial Studies, University of York) and David Macfarlane (M&G education editor) are a few of the chairs for various sessions.
Judith Mason will also introduce her new book.
Ticket Sales begin at 8:00am on Saturday 4 September, entrance is R20 per session (R10 for students and pensioners)
The festival opens on Friday 3 September at 19:00pm at The Room with Nic Dawes' (editor in chief of M&G) keynote address.
Summary of the programme for the M&G Johannesburg Literary Festival:
Being Here Now (South Africans in 2010) Venues: The Room and Art On Paper at 44 Stanley Avenue
Friday 3 September 19:00pm at The Room - Keynote address: Nic Dawes (M&G editor-in-chief)
Saturday 4 September Ticket sales from 8 am 9:00am - 10:30am Session 1: Word-count: The State of Fiction in SA Venue: The Room Chair: Craig MacKenzie (Professor of English, University of Johannesburg) 10:30am - 11:30am Launch and book signing: David Attwell and Chabani Manganyi discuss their book on Es'kia Mphaphlele, Bury Me at the Marketplace (Wits University Press) 11:30am - 13:00pm Session 2: Native nostalgia: Laughter, forgetting and airbrushing (parallel with Session 3) Venue: The Room Chair: Leon de Kock 11:30am - 13:00pm Session 3: After the fall: The postcolonial hereafter (parallel with Session 2) Venue: Art On Paper Chair: David Attwell (Professor, Postcolonial Studies, University of York), with a panel including Sunday Times fiction prize-winner Imraan Coovadia. 13:00pm - 14:30pm Break for lunch and book launch: Judith Mason's new book at Art on Paper 14:30pm - 16:00pm Session 4: The ABCs of RSA: So where to, education? (Parallel with Session 5) Venue: The Room David Macfarlane (M&G education editor) will chair a panel including Salim Vally. 15:00pm - 16:30pm Session 5: M&G Masterclass - difficult writing: writers respond to Murambi: The Book of Bones (Parallel with Session 4) Chair: Pamela Nichols (Wits Writing Centre) Venue: Art On Paper Guest authors: Boris Boubacar Diop (celebrated Senegalese author of Murambi: The Book of Bones and other novels, past editor-in-chief of Le Matin, a Senegalese independent newspaper and currently a visiting WISER Fellow at Wits) and Veronique Tadjo (Ivorian writer and dead of the French department at Wits) 16:00pm - 16:30pm Break for refreshments 16:30pm - 18:00pm Session 6: Mail & Guardian at 25 Venue: The Room Chair: Shaun de Waal (M&G chief film critic, books editor from 1996 to 2006, and editor of the just-published 25 Years of the Mail & Guardian) 19:00pm for 19:30pm Penguin Prize for African Writing: announcement of winners in non-fiction and fiction.
Sunday 5 September 9:30am - 11:00am Session 7: Being Here: South Africans in 2010 Venue: The Room Chair: Nic Dawes (M&G editor-in-chief) 11:00am - 11:45am Refreshments break 11:45am - 13:00pm Session 8: Scene of the Crime: Writing crime in South African fiction and non-fiction Venue: The Room Chair: Anthony Egan (M&G reviewer of crime fiction and non-fiction) 13:00pm Festival concludes