When I was 22, I went to live in Egypt for 18 months. I barely knew anything about the country but I did know about Naguib Mahfouz. Just four years earlier, he’d won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and my mother had so loved his work that she wrote to him via his publisher. To…
Category: literature
Mailbox Chronicles No. 3: African American Review
“African American Review” Spring 2014 is out. It’s one of my favorite journals, and I have a piece in this issue: “A Long Shot.” It’s based on the true story of an ex-slave who was rumored to be around 120 years old. She was interviewed in the 1930’s by the US Federal Writers Project. She…
Low White Page: three poets
White page. Sounds like the writer’s biggest challenge. Low white page. Sounds like an abstract crossword clue. Or the beginning of a haiku. Denise Low, Orlando White, Jeremy Page. Three poets whose work I’ve just read. Bone Light by Orlando White I encountered Orlando White a year ago at the Southwest Festival of the Written…
Mailbox Chronicles no. 1: Mission at Tenth
‘Mission at Tenth’ Volume 5 arrived in my mailbox last week. It includes an extract from my novel, Damnificados (page 49, if you really want to know), so I’m a little biased, but I think it’s an excellent publication. I haven’t read it all yet, but I particularly enjoyed a brilliant story by Josip Novakovich…
Ten Favourite Modern Novels
It’s the season of lists, and if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I’ve confined myself to novels written, or made available in English, after 1950. 1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The joyous masterpiece that broke open literature. Full of colour, riotous humour, vivid characters, and the sheer richness of…
JJ Amaworo Wilson, author 