Date: 24 - 26 August 2012
The annual Midlands Literary Festival takes place from 24 – 26 August. But this will be an historic festival, says festival founder Darryl Earl David. It will be a first for African languages when a Zulu Literary Museum is launched as part of the festival. The Zulu Literary Museum will be based at the PMB Campus of UKZN, and will be housed at the Centre for African Literary Studies (CALS).
Precedents have been set. There is an National English Literary Museum(NELM) in Grahamstown and an Afrikaans Literary Museum in Bloemfontein (NALN). But 18 years since democracy no African language has managed to get a literary museum off the ground. A literary museum is truly the holy grail in literary circles. The festival has invited a 30 strong line up of the country’s top writers to share this historic moment to say ‘tsaubona’ to this new addition to the literary family of SA.
The theme of our festival (The Stars say Tsau – Bona) is a literary play on Antjie Krogs famous book The Stars say Tsau in which she translated poetry of the San people, thereby bringing it into the mainstream.
Line-up of writers includes Gcina Mhlope; struggle icon Ahmed Kathrada, Miriam Tlali (first black woman to write a novel in English); Anton Harber (founder of Mail and Guardian and Paton Prize Finalist); McIntosh Polela (Paton Prize Finalist); Judge Chris Nicholson; Oswald Mtshali ( Schreiner Prize winner many moons ago); David Robbins (past winner of the coveted CNA Prize and author of that SA classic The 29th Parallel); Ian Player and Ashwin Desai (Shakespeare on Robben Island) to name but a few of the stars descending on Pietermaritzburg and Howick.
Via: bookslive
Download: full event program
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries: call Darryl David, Festival Director, at 081 391 8689 or Sandra Murphy at(033) 330 2461