nnedi
- Mood:
blah
Ok, I’ve got a serious gripe.
Penguin recently announced an award for African writers called The Penguin Prize for African Writing
"Through this award Penguin aims to highlight the diverse writing talent on the African continent and make new African fiction and non-fiction available to a wider readership."
"Novels of freshness and originality that represent the finest examples of contemporary fiction out of Africa will be considered."
Yet, there is this stipulation: "Submissions in the children’s literature, science fiction or fantasy genres will not be considered"
My first reaction: No science fiction or fantasy genres? WTF?! Well, why the heck not?!
My second reaction: So…just how many Africans are even WRITING fiction directly, openly categorized as “science fiction” and “fantasy”? Sooooo many that this has to be said?
My third reaction: Would novels like Famished Road, Icarus Girl, or Wizard of the Crow be rejected?
My fourth reaction: A prize with this kind of stipulation is openly disrespecting science fiction and fantasy as literature. Good Lord, I felt like I was back in my PhD program again.
My fifth reaction: This will do wonders in inspiring African writers to write science fiction and fantasy (I’m being sarcastic).
My sixth reaction: Well, the judges for the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature were open-minded enough to choose my fantasy novelZahrah the Windseeker. So, :-P!
Ok, my sixth reaction was me being a bit of an a**. Sort of. There’s a bit of truth there, too. Science fiction and fantasy ARE literature. It’s reductive and blind to think otherwise.
If I sound like I have a real chip on my shoulder with this issue, I certainly do. Long long story, and a long long history with this issue.
I doubt I’ll submit to this prize, but only because my forthcoming novel will be published by Penguin and, well, I think this prize would better benefit someone whose just coming up. I’m happy that the prize exists. It sounds wonderful otherwise.
If I were submitting, I’ve got a “magical realist” novel that I would send, sure. But it’s unfortunate that if I wanted, I couldn’t send my fantasy novel titled the Legend of Arro-yo which is set in 1929’s Southeast Nigeria, touches on the Igbo Women’s War, deals with female circumcision, and colonialism.
More on my take on SF and Africa in the next few weeks. I’m going to
write something Nebula Awards Blog. I've just got to cool down and gather my thoughts.
Nnedi 
- Mood:
annoyed
This story is closely linked to the world of Zahrah the Windseeker...in an odd way. It's about a woman in pursuit of something strange.
There will also be an audio version of it available later this evening.
Sorry for the cross-posting. :-)
¨°º¤ø„¸ Nnedi Okorafor ¸„ø¤º°¨
¸„ø¤º°¨nnedi.com
..°º¤ø„¸¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø„¸¨°º¤
This story is easily one of my weirdest stories yet. I almost didn’t finish writing it because I felt it was so out there. Thanks to the encouragement and critiques of a few writer friends I continued on.
It's also a story that is oddly linked to my first novel Zahrah the Windseeker.
I’ll keep you posted about when From The Lost Diary of Treefrog7 will be available.
Nnedi
- Mood:
bouncy
See the full list at: http://ameliabloomer.wordpress.com/2
“The Shadow Speaker” features Muslim protagonist of 2070
Who says young adult fiction about Muslim girls can only be contemporary or historical? Nnedi Okorafor’s 2007 novel shows that Muslim teen lit can venture into the realm of the future. Young adult novel The Shadow Speaker explores science fiction and fantasy with a story that plays out in a futuristic, magical universe with worlds beyond Earth. It does so starring a Muslim protagonist, 14- to 15-year-old Ejii Ugabe.
In Ejji’s world, it is 2070. And instead of a futuristic Britain or America, Ejii lives in Niger. She is black, but this is not a “race novel.” English is but one of the many languages she speaks, which include the more useful Hausa and Arabic. Ejii lives in a world post-”Peace Bomb.” Nuclear war led to the release of these bombs, which aimed to spread peace by causing mutations in the human population. (The goal to make people so different they wouldn’t be able to unite against each other.)
What the bombs did was release magic into the world. This is a world of desert magicians, screaming storms that intend to kill lone travelers, and talking camels. And Ejii, as a “shadow speaker,” has a special talent: She can tap into the thoughts of feelings of anything or anyone, from plants to murderous chiefs...
http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/02/1
I started writing it just after my father passed in 2004 and the very nature of the story plagued me with nightmares as I was writing it. It also plagued several of my friend with nightmares when they read it. The story is relentless and unflinching. It was inspired by the genocide in the Sudan and written just after the passing of my father (I started it a week after). There is deep deep African magic. There is terrible violence, but there is beauty too.
David Anthony Durham, author of Acacia, said this about Who Fears Death?: "Nnedi Okorafor has embarked on a rather stunning literary journey. In several wonderful novels and short stories, she has tapped into diverse traditions that date back into the dawn of humanity’s first storytelling ventures. She uses this material toward a forward-looking complexity that, I believe, predicts the coming face of global speculative fiction. Her latest novel for adults, Who Fears Death?, is urgently topical, at times brutal, and always wholly original. It’s no surprise she’s been racking up awards. There are more to come, surely."
It is scheduled for release in early 2010. My YA utterly insane fantasy novel, tentatively called Sunny and the Leopard People (this title is going to change) is scheduled for release in the fall of 2010.
In other news, the paperback of The Shadow Speaker comes out in March. Watch for the book trailer.
- Mood:
ecstatic
My novel, Sunny and the Leopard People, has just been acquired by Sharyn November at Viking (for the harcover) and Firebird Books (for the paperback). Both are imprints of Penguin.
About three years ago, I met this spunky little gangly girl. She was the daughter of a family friend. They were visiting from Nigeria. She was also strikingly albino. Imagine a girl with two fully Igbo parents who's facial features and hair are Igbo but whose skin is pale, whose hair is so blond it's nearly white, who's eyes were grey green.
My daughter and I got to spend a week with her. She had this very animated personality. And she had an affinity for telling stories. She was a beautiful girl, inside and out.
By the end of the week, I knew I'd write about her. Especially when she told me about the day she set her hair on fire. A priceless tale and the inspiration of a short story I wrote titled The Albino Girl (read it at http://www.amazon.com/The-Albino-Girl/d
This short story turned out to be the first chapter of Sunny and the Leopard People, a fantasy novel set in Nigeria (time period: maybe a few years from now). It's technically a prequel to my second novel, The Shadow Speaker.
Below is the link to an Angelique Kidjo video. This video very much inspired this novel, too. I saw this video years and years ago, but when I wrote this novel, the gods and spirits in this video came back to me. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vP3ic1J
Needless to say, I'm ecstatic. :-)!!!!
Tentative pub date: Spring 2010
Nnedi
At last, the Nigerian edition of Zahrah the Windseeker is available for purchase. The publisher is Kachifo LTD (http://www.kachifo.com), which has brought the works of so many of my favorite writers to Nigeria, including Sefi Atta, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ben Okri, , and Chimamanda N. Adichie.
I love this edition of Zahrah the Windseeker because it includes some wonderful illustrations (in addition to the ones that are already in the book). It’s a lovely well-made book.
Here are two of the illustrations:
You can order this edition here: http://www.kachifo.com/general/books.ph
Nnedi
- Mood:accomplished
I have a story called "Spider the Artist" in a really cool science fiction anthology titled Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams (scheduled for release in August). The Publisher's Weekly review just came out and my story had a nice mention:
This thought-provoking anthology of nine original stories posits near-future paradigm shifts in everything from race relations (in Ted Kosmatka's vivid and moving "N-Words," where cloned Neanderthals encounter violent hatred from Homo sapiens) to the morality of uploaded consciousness (in Blake Charlton's clumsy but charming "Endosymbiont"), with varying success. The hero of Jay Lake's "The Future by Degrees" invents an energy-saving thermal superconductor only to be pursued by corporations protecting their business, with predictable results. Pepper, the mercenary hero of Tobias S. Buckell's Crystal Rain, refuses to assassinate a dictator in the morally contrived "Resistance." Considerably more powerful is Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's "Spider the Artist," which combines African folk tales and advanced robotics in a chilling story about a rising social conscience in the Nigerian oil fields. Despite weak spots, this anthology accurately reflects many of today's most pressing political and social issues, and will give readers plenty to think about and argue over."
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