African Pens (2007)

Moral and creative courage marks these new stories from young writers of the SADC region. They say what they want and confront what they must, unconstrained by past notions of what can or should be voiced. African Pens – New writing from southern Africa 2007 is the final collection in a three-year series of best entries to the US$10 000 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award.

“The best of these young writers are on a par with their coevals in the West … the material they work with is of burning social, political and human importance.

From the thirty-one stories I read I made a short list of six finalists. The standard of these finalists is very high indeed; any one of them would have been a worthy prize-winner.” Nobel Laureate JM Coetzee

African Pens authors:
Elizabeth Bishop, Renée Bonorchis, Clare Butcher, Malcolm Cumming, Carol-Anne Davids, Nadia Davids, Petina Gappah, Claire Gaul, Karen Jennings, Stanley Kenani, Deborah Klein, Morne Malan, Steven Marston, Matthew Mbanga, Linda McCullough, Sean Mitchell, Christopher Mlalazi, Fiona Moolla, Kyne Nislev Bernstorff, Mehluli Nxumalo, Lee Olivier, Vrenika Pather, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Michelle Sacks, Gill Schierhout, Alexandra Smith, Karlien van der Schyff, Richard Walne and Carolyn Weir.