Tools of the Writer's Craft and Fiction Writing

I will be teaching the course "Tools for the Writer's Craft" at the UC Davis Extension. Here is the course catalogue description:

"When writers move past the initial inspiration the act and the art of writing gives them, they often find themselves developing an interest in craft, and craft is the emphasis of this workshop. How do we develop character and reveal plot without resorting to dull exposition? Render autobiographical incidents into useful fictional material? Reveal character motivation while maintaining plot momentum? Subtly but effectively sound thematic concerns? With the help of published examples and a discussion of how these writers are effective, weekly assignments give you opportunities to put theory into practice. These assignments are discussed in a workshop forum, which further enhances your ability to discern what goes into a piece of effective writing."

This course is part of the certificate program in Creative Writing, and it runs from October 6 to November 24, on Tuesday nights.


I will also continue to offer my Cosumnes River College Fiction Writing Workshop and here are the details:

ENGCW 410 Fiction Writing Workshop 3 Units
Description: This is a creative writing course designed for students who wish to concentrate on fiction writing. Through lecture, discussion, assigned reading, writing exercises, short story (or novel chapter) writing, and critiques of student writing in a workshop mode, the student will examine critically the elements of literary creation. The students will keep a journal and prepare a portfolio of their work. This course may be taken twice for credit, but only once in combination with ENGCW 400.

Schedule: Full Term, Aug 22-Dec 17
Mondays 07:00PM-10:05PM

US-based Nigerian writer wins the Caine Prize

This year's Caine Prize for African Writing goes to EC Osondu for "Waiting", which is described by The Guardian as " spare, poignant", a story abour "about a child waiting to be rescued from a refugee camp"

Known as the African Booker, the 10-year-old prize goes to a short story by an African writer published in English. Past winners include Zimbabwe's Brian Chikwava,Uganda's Monica Arac de Nyeko, South Africa's Henrietta Rose-Innes, and others.

Osondu was recently interviewed by Bookaholic.

The winning story was originally published by Guernica, an online publication. This is a great step in validating the increasing credibility of online journals.

Big Poetry Event at the Sacramento Poetry Center

On Monday, July 13, I will be hosting two poets, Neal Whitman and Danny Romero.

Venue: Sacramento Poetry Center
Time: 7:30 pm

Neal Whitman lives in Pacific Grove, California, where he is a
member of its Public Library Board and its Cultural Arts
Commission, and, in nearby Carmel, is a volunteer docent and life
member of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. His poems
have been published in Monterey Poetry Review, Vermont Literary
Review, The MacGuffin, International Journal for Healthcare and
Humanities, Getting Something Read, The Pedestal Magazine, and
New Verse News. He also is an editor for the medical humanities
online journal, Pulse. Neal likes to write haiku and teach others
how; he is a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, the Haiku
Poets of Northern California, and the Haiku Society of America.
Neal says, "Long ago I took to heart a piece of advice from former
Poet Laureate Donald Hall that the poetry recital is public
confirmation of a private labor. When I read to others, I do so as a
poetry professor –– not as an English professor, but as one who
professes his belief that poetry should and can be part of a healthy
diet. I also believe strongly that a poetry permits –– no, demands ––
that the writer go beyond the biographical self to tell what may or
might happen in a life and not be limited to his or her own personal
life." On the 1st of each month, he posts a "Poetry Professor" essay
on www.shortpoem.org.

I got to know about Neal when I published the following poems in Munyori Literary Journal:
Blowing down the Walls of Jericho
(upon listening to Marsalis Standard Time I compact disc)

a coffeehouse poetry recital
like a jazz club trumpeteer’s riff
is public confirmation of a private labor
elemental power harnessed
and directed from deep inside

sound crackles out into the air
charges and excites and then leaves
an afterglow
mindful of the arial moment

unless I listen to the audience
I cannot say
what is heard

not to say that
listening is not a restful activity

like musicians, if poets do not listen, they cannot speak



What a Disaster

Dinner for one in front of the TV
when my blind date does not show.
What a disaster.
Dinner for two when my blind date
shows up… with food allergies.
What a disaster.
Dinner for three for two old friends
who really are old. Me too.
What a disaster.
Dinner for four with my mate
and a couple ready to break.
What a disaster.
Dinner for five at a table
set for four. Oops.
What a disaster.
Dinner for six with guests
who don’t know I’m over my head.
What a disaster.

What I Learned about Pilgrims in 1954: Roxbury, Mass.

Miss Gallagher told us
Thoreau’s grandfather left France
without worry without a penny
my too-many-greats-to-count grandfather
came to America on a slave ship
a boy in my class says his grandpapa
ran away from the Czar
Henry made pencils
and would not pay his poll tax
and liked anyone who sauntered
to new or holy lands
his cabin an escape house
my teacher told us
her grand da left Ireland
to escape British rule
Miss Gallagher taught us to sing for the land
where our fathers died
and of the pilgrims’ pride.
Why did she love the English so?


Danny Romero is a regular in the Sacramento Poetry scene. He was born and raised in Los Angeles . His poems and short stories have been published in literary journals and anthologies throughout the country, most recently,Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature and Pow Wow: Charting the Faultlines in the American Experience - Short Fiction from Then to Now. He is the author of the novel Calle 10, and he teaches English at Sacramento City College.

Weekend Reading: Mungoshi, Aidoo, Head, Achebe, et al

What I like about writing in a specific genre is that I get to read a lot. Perhaps I write in order to read. It is like I reward myself, for finishing a short story draft, by reading someone's short story. Since I am putting together a collection set in rural and urban Zimbabwe, I have been drawn to authors who have dealt with the same issues, dichotomies, etc. So for this weekend, these are the books I have lined up:

The Collector of Other Treasures & Other Botswana Village Stories by Bessie Head
The Setting Sun & the Rolling World by Charles Mungoshi
No Sweetness Here and Other Stories by Ama Ata Aidoo
African Short Stories, edited by Chinua Achebe and CL Innes
The Unwinding Threads: Writing by Women in Africa, edited by Charlotte Bruner
The Henemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories edited by Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes

Since these are collections of short stories, they are easy to read at the same time, one story from this book, another from that one, and so on....
Of course, I have already read Mungoshi, who almost pre-empts the concerns of some of my Mukoma stories, but in reading him carefully, I am noticing that his stories are told from his distinct vantage point. He certainly hasn't told "my" Mukoma stories. But each time I read Mungoshi, I am left with the feeling that writing is doable. I am sure that's what they call inspiration. Everyone should read a Mungoshi work at least once a year.

Set in the 70s, like Mungoshi's, Ama Ata Aidoo's stories cover a different stage in African history. While Mungoshi's stories deal with family issues in colonial Rhodesia, Aidoo, writing at the same time, is already dealing with post-colonial issues of Ghana; but her stories are also steeped in family politics, which, of course, mirror national ones. That's the thing: if you look carefully at some of the politics played out at the national level in many countries, you will notice that they are already mirrored at the family (hence social) level. As some stories show, there were family dictators in Africa before we even knew about the Mugabes and the Amins. As some of the contemporary Zimbabwean writers seem to be cautioning, the mess in government, can be examined through the mess in the little villages (There are no angels on this earth, just little wicked beings...., the literature seems to be saying). Such concerns are equally revealed in Mungoshi and Aidoo.

I met Ama Ata Aidoo some time in the 90s in Harare. What a down-to-earth woman. By the time I met her she had already been many things: highly educated, internationally published, had served as the minister of education in Ghana, the director of the Ghana Broadcasting corporation, was a mother, etc, but we were sitting there at the Book fair, in a group of ordinary people (there were four of us at our table) listening to a speech by an extraordinary writer whose success came nowhere near what I now understand were already the accolades of very ordinary-looking Aidoo, who almost didn't introduce herself to the group as a writer.

When people sometimes ask me why I write (because they will know that I write, guaranteed), I often quote Ama Ata Aidoo: "I write because I feel too much." Someone asked her why she featured female characters, and she said something like when she woke up in the morning and looked at the mirror, she saw a woman. If you can, you have to read those Lewis Nkosi interviews of African writers which were done in the eighties. They put things into perspective: these early African writers sometimes didn't have the freedom we now have to write what we want, but the literature they produced marks an important shift in African writing. Some of it reads like junk (because it serves the needs of its publishers, but no generation is free from the dictates of certain publishing interests, hence each generation will produce its junk).

So I am enjoying it all, the good, and the bad. In Mungoshi's US-published collection, there are stories that explain the obvious to cater for a foreign audience. Nowhere is this clearer than in "The Crow", a moving story about two boys whose excitement turns into obsessive animal cruelty when they kills a crow. Here the narrator explains things to a foreign audience: "...birds and animals that people do not eat are associated with the night and witchcraft in our country." But in such a short story you can see connections to larger works like The Lord of the Flies, works in which humans are at their worst in behavior, those human-too-human moments deciphered in the thinnest thread of desire.... I really like "Shadows on the Wall", the story that hints at what could be wrong with traditional culture. The child narrator, who expresses everything through a patchwork of shadows, tells the reader that his father denied him "the gift of language." Yet, if he were to defend himself, the father would argue that everything he did was culturally mandated, including teaching silence to his son (because children's voices are better off silenced).

I am re-reading "Who will stop the dark", and I am already mentally drawing parallels with Hemingway's "The Old man and the Sea", but the old man in this story is much wiser and accepts that there are certain forces of nature that only the young can fight. But don't forget the best of old men ever created by Mungoshi, old Musoni in title story, so I feel the temptation to leave the characters of "Who Will...?" doing their fishing and go to Old Musoni. "The Accident" remains memorable because of its shocking first paragraph, but my very best story in the whole collection is "The Brother", but I often want to enjoy it together with the lucid "Coming of the Dry Season."

In Bessie Head's collection (also published in the 70s), there is a lot of the anthropological exposition that clarifies things to those who may be confused by the strangeness of the setting, especially in "The Deep River: A story of Tribal Migration" where we are told about the origins of a seemingly peaceful village, a village full of angels, but the story redeems itself by the end when the degree of skepticism increases and we know there is adultery, the critique of polygamy and traditional chieftainship, and a woman gets to choose, a point which is emphasized). What I like so far about Bessie Head is how her work is an early reflection of some key works on Botswana. She looks at the society, at first with an outsider's eye, as does Alexander McCall Smith, which is probably where this "outside" feel of the work might be coming from. As you know, she was a South African who became a citizen of Botswana, but maybe as I read more into her, this may turn out to be a trivial detail, especially when we start considering examples of other naturalized writers like Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, and...Joseph Conrad (I can't think of other names right now).

I didn't mean for this to be a long post, but it is distracting me from something more difficult, (I should be revising a short story right now). I call it creative procrastination.

Each time I have read The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories, I have not gone too far beyond Njubulo Ndebele's "The Prophetess"; it's one of those stories about which you say, "How come he got to write it before I did?" It's brilliant, centers on the ordinary, and it demonstrates the power of faith (in anything, really). I like it's narrative POV, and the tension it creates in the reader. A boy has been sent to a prophetess by his sick mother to get a bottle of holy water, and this trip is quite a journey for him, an expedition into some of the key issues of life. I liked how by the time he arrives home the water in the bottle is not holy anymore, or is it holier, considering that he has refilled the bottle with ordinary tape water? Who knows? But it's a brilliant story.

Oh, actually, I have also read the second story, "Amnesty", by Nadine Gordimer: short, but effective.

In the earlier publication, African Short Stories, which carries "twenty stories from across the continent", I have read Sembene Ousemane's "The False Prophet",the first story of this volume. Achebe and Innes were having great fun with this idea of prophets, considering that the second volume starts with "The Prophetess". Or it doesn't really matter. I love Sembene's works though. I will read anything of his I can find. My MA thesis was a comparison of Sembene's God's Bits of Wood and Rudolfo Anaya's Heart of Aztlan. I enjoyed reading the two novels side by side, works from opposite sides of the globe which tell the same story. Looking back now, I can say, emphatically, that we are in the business of recycling stories that have already been told in different contexts and places.

That's it for my weekend reading list. If I discover a unique trend in these works, I may have an opportunity to write a short review essay.

ZIBF is Back, so is the Writers' Indaba

Zimbabwe International Book Fair 2009 INDABA

Theme: “Reading and Writing Zimbabwe”

The ZIBFA Indaba is an annual Conference which is the major forum for debating critical issues to the book industry in Africa. It is also a unique national platform for networking and collaboration among stakeholders. This year's Indaba, whose theme is: “Reading and Writing Zimbabwe”, will be held on 27 and 28 July 2009 at Crowne Plaza from 0815 to 1700 hours, with Wednesday, 29 July 2009 reserved for the young persons Indaba.

The Book Fair is scheduled to run from July 30 to August 1.

A Conversation with Sunil Sharma on Literature

I am featured in an interview on India's Creative Saplings forum, under the topic, "Voices: near and far-off". Very thoughtful questions from Sunil Sharma, a writer and scholar based in India. Here, in part, is the interview:

Sunil --Do you think writing is important in to-day’s global world?

Emmanuel: Writing is more important now than it has ever been. For one, there is increased literacy in the world and more access to technology, and with the internet, we read about places we would known about otherwise. Our world abounds with news of disasters and sometimes it seems that as we draw closer to each other we are still in many ways separated by the specificity of our experiences. For this and many reasons, writing can be used to help us understand each other as we work together in the global world.
As cultures interact, it is important to gain literacy about them, and one way to ensure that this happens is through writing. Who knew that HBO, for instance, would be running a series set in Botswana called The Number 1 Lady Detective Agency, which is based on books written by a Zimbabwean based in the UK. Only in a globalized world is such a thing possible.

Sunil -- Can it make a solid effect in a standardized world of mass-produced objects?

Emmanuel: With the proliferation of mass-produced objects, it would seem like writing has not place anymore in the world, but the opposite is true. Even as we enjoy these objects, the need arises to express our experiences of such enjoyment through writing. But remember that writing is a skill that’s required in life, so on its own, it will continue to be taught as a part of the socialization of people into the literate society; and along with this comes reading, which could inspire further writing. Because writing is part of art, which we will always use to express ourselves, it doesn’t seem like something we can stop to do, as long as we remain artistic beings.

Sunil -- How writing can really resist the reified thinking of a commercialized culture?

Emmanuel: Writing cannot resist its commercial reification, but true art has a way of emerging, whether or not it is treated as a beneficial commodity. Take poetry, for instance. Looking at the state of poetry, one would be discouraged from even becoming a poet, but because it is an art that often reaches the core of our humanity, a deepest expression of our feelings, a liberating one at that, it always resists reified thinking. But not all forms of writing can afford to avoid the commercial realities of our world. Much of popular writing is tailored towards money-making, otherwise it would be a waste of time. And often what can be commercialized is people’s attitude towards a form of writing. There is a ready market for popular fiction, and publishers thus keep churning it out. As for serious literary writing, as long as we teach literature in schools, and there are degrees to be earned in literature, there is a great chance that no amount of commoditization can take away the creative leanings of a Toni Morrison.

Sunil -- Can avant-garde neutralize the increasing commodification of art and artistic products?

Emmanuel: I imagine it would do so if it is not itself immediately commoditized. But in a place like the United States, institutions responsible for the creation of art, all the MFA programs, which may even encourage some form of a uniform avant-garde, are built around the idea of looking at art as commodity. Perhaps the image of the starving artist is fast dying, as commoditization, as with reification, of an artist’s work may bring commercial gains. Avant-garde, in its search for evocation and radicalism is sometimes a quick target for objectification, as people sometimes fall for what’s different, what resists the establishment. It can easily gain the revered label of “cool”.

Sunil -- Cultural location and place and locale are important in a trans-national, Internet-driven world?

Emmanuel: On April 25 I was a presenter at a writer’s conference where the keynote speaker, Julia Connor (poet laureate of Sacramento) talked about the importance of place in writing about our stories. I found her message strong and valuable, as I have always believed, in the Faulknerian model, that specificity in place and locale can enhance the universal in a work of literature.
Place is even more important in this globalized, internet-driven world because it helps writers ground themselves in an idiosyncratic mode from which to create their works. Someone reading about Mumbai while in Harare will become aware of the specificity of Mumbai as a location, which has also been universalized by the internet; that person may want to contribute to the specified presentation of a Harare life, which is immediately given universal presence on the world wide web. Of course, issues of interest and access of such broadcasting of information about the places does not reach everyone at the same time or with the same impact. There are far too many people who still cannot access the internet, but to those who do, learning about the specific settings of an author’s work is important.
Specificity in setting has always been important in the most successful literature and will continue to in this internet world of ours. In fact, specificity is more important now than it has ever been.

Sunil -- Why is there a dearth of serious voices? Why is there a multiplicity of small voices in every literature?

Emmanuel: If this question is being given in the context of internet publishing, I would say it depends on what “seriousness” here means. But it is true that not many of the established writers publish online, although their works are increasingly being sampled online as a marketing or promotional tool. Traditional publishing, especially as handled by conglomerates and media companies, continues to attract the big names, because bigness attracts bigness. And some of these big names happen to be serious—Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, Jhumpa Lahiri,Ian McEwan and many others.
A multiplicity of small voices in every literature is caused by the fact that current publishing trends are favorable to keeping a multiplicity of names small while promoting the few big ones which are already profitable. Publishing is risk-taking; it’s a big investment. But the multiplicity of the small names is a good sign that there is ambition, and that people still believe in writing. With hard work, some of those multiple, small names will join the top brass, as defined first, by the conglomerates, and second, by elite prizes like the Nobel, and fellowships like the Macarthur.

Sometimes writers just want to express themselves, which explains why there seem to be a multiplicity of small voices. Such voices, because they want to be heard, become easy victims of the vanity press and scam writing contests, but some have also taken to self-publishing on the internet. Sometimes they are desperate to have their work out that they will not give it the effort it needs, and we end up with more sub-standard writing by many small voices. In their smallness, though, there is a bigness that’s defined by the sheer size of their number, and they are hard to ignore. The internet may finally change the way publishing works.

Read more on the Creative Saplings forum. The founder of this forum, Shaleen Kumar Singh, is the founding editor of the journal Creative Saplings.

Petina Gappah Shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award

Petina Gappah has been shortlisted for the 2009 Frank O'Connor Short Story Award.

Below are the details of this update. The quotes are from the Award's website.

"The award at 35,000 euro is the richest prize in the world for the short story form and is given annually to an original collection of stories judged to be the best. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li. The award is organised by the Munster Literature Centre with generous funding from Cork City Council. Notable names edged out for a position on this year's shortlist include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimanda Ngozi Adiche, veteran short story authors Ali Smith, Mary Gaitskill and James Lasdun and reviewers' darling Sana Krasikov. The winner will be announced in Cork on September 20th at the closing ceremony of the tenth Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival which is the oldest annual short story festival in the world."

The shortlisted books are as follows:


1. An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah published by Faber, London.

2. Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw published by Vintage, New Zealand.

3. Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia.

4. The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh Published by Penguin Ireland.

5. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Published by FSG New York and Granta UK

6. Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy published by Harper Perennial New York.

For more details, go to the Award website.

According to the Guardian, four out of the shortlisted stories are by first-time writers. Our own (Zimbabwe's) Petina Gappah told the Guardian that "she had been 'going around with a rather demented grin on my face' ever since she heard that her debut collection, An Elegy for Easterly, was on the list"

"I still can't believe I am on the shortlist ahead of all those excellent writers," she said. "It is too bizarre. At this rate, I may just start to be believe that I actually know what I am doing!" she said.

Congratulations, Petina!