Festival News:

The Black Ink Festival, an African American book festival in North Charleston, South Carolina, will take place on January 12-14. The theme is “Black to the Future” and the keynote speaker is Sierra Leonean-American author Namina Forna. The festival includes workshops and events, both virtual and in-person, aimed at amplifying Black voices in literature and are free and open to the public.

Wolverhampton Literature Festival will take place from February 3-5, 2023. Hosted by City of Wolverhampton Council, it aims to amplify the voices of authors, poets, writers, storytellers and more, particularly from the Black Country and surrounding areas. The festival will offer a diverse program of events, promoting literature and creative communities in Wolverhampton.

The 6th edition of the Kerala Literature Festival is set to be inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday, January 14th. The festival, which is being held after a two-year break due to the pandemic, will feature around 500 speakers in 248 events, including Nobel laureates Ada Yonath and Abhijit Banerjee, and Booker Prize winners Shehan Karunatilaka and Arundhati Roy. The event will be held at six venues on the north beach of Kozhikode.

Book News:

Humphrey Davies and Robin Moger were announced as joint winners of the 2022 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. The prize will be awarded at the Translation Prizes Award Ceremony on February 8, 2023 at the British Library in London. Both Davies and Moger have previously won the prize, and this is not the first year that the prize has been split between two translators.

Same Page Community Reads initiative is partnering with Jefferson-Madison Regional Library to feature Ross Gay‘s book “The Book of Delights” as part of the reading initiative. Gay will discuss the book at a 2023 Virginia Festival of the Book event.

Enzo Traverso has received the 2022 Premio Napoli award for his book “Revolution: An Intellectual History” which reinterprets the history of 19th and 20th century revolutions through a constellation of dialectical images. The book was also translated to Italian, French and Spanish, and will be translated to other languages.

Nominations are now open for the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which will be awarded on November 12th. The Prize recognizes writers whose work promotes peace, social justice, and global understanding and awards $10,000 to one fiction and one nonfiction author. It is considered one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world and is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States.

Researchers funded by the European Union have deciphered ancient Latin texts written on papyrus, providing new insights into Roman society, education, and the spread of Latin. The EU-funded PLATINUM project used a multidisciplinary approach, resulting in the production of the Corpus of Latin Texts on Papyrus, which will be published by Cambridge University Press. The project also made several groundbreaking discoveries, including the discovery of Seneca the Elder’s Histories and the only known Latino-Arabic papyrus. The project has helped to shed new light on the spread of Latin and cultural interactions in the Roman Empire

The winners of the 8th annual Walter Dean Myers Awards for Outstanding Children’s Literature have been announced. The Teen Category award went to Andrea L. Rogers and Jeff Edwards for “Man Made Monsters”. Sabaa Tahir’s “All My Rage” and Sonora Reyes’s “The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School” were selected as Teen Honors. In the Young Readers category, Angela Joy and Janelle Washington won for “Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement“. The awards ceremony will be held in Washington D.C. on March 17th and will be open to the public and livestreamed.

British author Fay Weldon, known for her work on women’s experiences and sexual politics, has died at 91. She was a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, known for her 30 novels, and for her work on the popular 1970s drama series “Upstairs, Downstairs“. Her fiction often dealt with women’s relationships with men, children, parents, and each other.

The Union of Mosques in France is suing the French novelist Michel Houellebecq for discrimination and hate speech after he made controversial statements about Muslims in France. He has stated that the statements will be removed from an interview and a forthcoming book. The president of the union and the interviewer are also named in the lawsuit.

The 40th annual Key West Literary Seminar is focusing on Black literature and African American literary history, featuring nearly two dozen authors and scholars. The event includes discussions, lectures, readings, book signings, and events highlighting Key West’s Black history and performances. It is open to public and free to attend.

Charles Simic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet known for his unique style of lyricism and economy, tragic insight, and disruptive humor, passed away at the age of 84.

Egyptian writer Shady Lewis, who resides in London, won the Sawiris Cultural Award for his acclaimed novel “A Brief History of Genesis and Eastern Cairo” in the category of best book by an established writer, but subsequently declined the award, sparking a lot of online comments and discussions.

You can explore more content via the association’s website here and discuss topics in the forum with other member festivals here.