To Prof. Wole Soyinka @ 76

Our lionized sage Prof. Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Prize winner in Literature is celebrating his 76th birthday (he was born on July 13, 1934) and he is going to launch a new political party called Democratic Front for Peoples Federation in September.


We recommend Okey Ndibe’s An Apology to Wole Soyinka published in his OFFSIDE MUSINGS column in the Daily Sun newspaper of Tuesday July 20, 2010. Ndibe recalled the daring revolutionary zeal of the lion-hearted Soyinka during the Nigerian civil war and his opposition to military tyranny and corruption in Nigeria.


Bookalleria is wishing Wole Soyinka many happy returns of the day with more blessings from above with all our love.

What Sort Of Books Does Macmillan New Writing Publish?

The following FAQ is for the benefit of writers from Macmillan New Writing.


What Sort Of Books Does Macmillan New Writing Publish?

We only publish complete and unpublished novels for adults, written in English, by authors who have not previously had a novel published.

What sort of books don’t you publish?

We don’t publish non-fiction, children’s books (including books written for young adults), poetry, short stories or novellas (defined as works under 60,000 words). If your work falls into any of these categories we regret we are unable to help.

How should I send you my novel?

Only emailed submissions can be considered (please see below for the email address). The email must include the novel’s title in the Subject line. The body of the email should contain a short synopsis and biographical note (including details of any previously published work), and the entire novel should be attached to the email as a single standard word-processing file, preferably Microsoft Word. Please do not send typescripts as individual chapter files, or as ‘compressed’, ‘zipped’ or password protected files.

Can I send more than one novel at a time?

If you wish to send multiple novels for consideration please send each one as a separate submission.

Do you accept hardcopy (printed) submissions, or submissions on disc or CD?

No, and unfortunately we are unable to return any typescripts sent to us in this way.

Will you consider incomplete novels or proposals for as yet unwritten novels?

No, we can only accept finished novels.

Do you accept submissions from authors whose work has previously been self-published, ‘vanity’ published or published electronically/online?

Yes.

Does MNW accept submissions from outside the UK?

Yes, a number of our authors live abroad.

Will MNW consider translations?

Yes, as long as the novel has already been translated into English.

How long will you take to decide if you want to publish my novel?

If we would like to publish your novel, we will let you know within twelve weeks of receipt. Unfortunately, due to the large number of submissions we receive, we are unable to respond to unsuccessful submissions. If you have not had a response within twelve weeks please assume that we have, regretfully, decided not to publish your novel.

How should my manuscript be formatted?

We prefer 12-point, Times New Roman, double line-spaced.

How long should my manuscript be?

Not less than 60,000 words or more than 130,000.

Can I resubmit a novel which has been declined by you in the past but which has been revised?

No, regrettably a decision to decline must be final.

To whom should my submission be addressed?

There’s no need to address it to a specific individual: if it is eligible and sent to the email address below it will be read and assessed by one of our team of editors.

I am a literary agent. Can I send you my client’s novel?

Yes, please follow the submissions procedure described above.

What are the terms of the MNW contract?

Macmillan New Writing pays its authors a 20% royalty on net receipts but does not pay an advance (i.e. an advance payment against future sales). Our contract is standard and non-negotiable and we acquire world rights in all titles, with rights revenue split 50/50. We also reserve the option to publish the author’s second novel. If we acquire an author’s second novel it and any subsequent novels we acquire will be published, with an advance, on negotiable terms.

Where should I send my novel?

Please email it to newwriting@macmillan.co.uk

Thank you very much for your interest. We look forward to hearing from you!


With best wishes from the editorial team at Macmillan New Writing.

Updated April 2010


Macmillan New Writing Editorial

Please note: due to the very large number of submissions we receive we are currently unable to respond to unsuccessful submissions, or enter into any correspondence regarding our reasons for declining to publish a novel. We do, however, promise to assess every eligible submission we receive.

Our terms: Macmillan New Writing pays its authors a 20% royalty on net receipts but does not pay an advance (i.e. an advance payment against future sales). Our contract is standard and non-negotiable and we acquire world rights in all titles, with rights revenue split 50/50. We also reserve the option to publish the author’s second novel. If we acquire an author’s second novel it and any subsequent novels we acquire will be published, with an advance, under negotiable terms.

Tanure Ojaide and two other Nigerians Shortlisted for the Inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing

Prolific poet and novelist Tanure Ojaide and two other Nigerians have been shortlisted for the Inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing. The other Nigerians are Chika Ezeanya in the fiction category and Pius Adesanmi in the non-fiction category.

The following is a detailed report from Penguin Books in South Africa.


Penguin Books South Africa is delighted to announce the shortlists for the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing.

Having received approximately 250 submissions in the fiction category and 50 in the non-fiction category from countries all over Africa, Penguin Books South Africa is pleased to announce the names of the shortlisted authors for the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing. This award seeks to highlight the diverse writing talent on the African continent and make new African fiction and non-fiction available to a wider readership.

The shortlisted authors for the Penguin Prize for African Writing are:

Fiction

Ellen Aaku (Zambia)
Moraa Gitaa (Kenya)
Chika Ezeanya (Nigeria)
Shubnum Khan (South Africa)
Isabella Morris (South Africa)
Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ (Kenya)

Non-fiction

Pius Adesanmi (Nigeria)
Andrew Barlow (South Africa)
Ruth Carneson (South Africa)
Ahmed Mortiar (South Africa)
Tanure Ojaide (Nigeria)
Anli Serfontein (South Africa)
Tebogo Tlharipe (South Africa)

These manuscripts have been sent to the judges and the winners will be announced on Saturday 4 September 2010 at the Mail and Guardian Literary Festival. The prize in each category will be R50 000 and a publishing contract with Penguin Books South Africa, with worldwide distribution via Penguin Group companies.

About the judges

Fiction

Kole Omotoso

Kole Omotoso was born in Nigeria in 1943. After studying in Nigeria, he obtained a doctorate on contemporary Arabic prose and dramatic writing at the University of Edinburgh. From 2001, he has been a professor in the Drama Department at Stellenbosch University, and is currently the director of the Africa Diaspora Research Group based in Johannesburg. In 2009, he was a judge for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Africa Region and was the keynote speaker on the festival’s opening night. He is the author of the classic historical narrative The Combat, first published in 1972 and republished in the Penguin Modern Classics series, as well as one short story collection, two plays, three books of literary criticism and several academic articles, novels and historical narratives.

Harry Garuba

Harry Garuba is the head of department and associate professor in the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. His teaching interests include: African Literature, Postcolonial Theory and Criticism, African Modernities, and Intellectuals/Intellectual Traditions of African Nationalist Writing. In addition to being an academic, he is an author and poet, and with an active interest in African and postcolonial literatures, has been a member of the editorial advisory board of the Heinemann African Writers Series.

Elinor Sisulu

Elinor Sisulu was born in Zimbabwe. She studied in her home country as well as in Senegal and the Netherlands. As an academic researcher for the Ministry of Labour in Zimbabwe in the early eighties, she published studies of women’s work and development assistance in Zimbabwe. This included a major study for NORAD that was later published by SAPES in a book entitled Women in Zimbabwe. From 1987 to 1990 she worked for the International Labour Organisation on assistance programmes for the ANC, PAC and SWAPO. In 1991, Elinor moved to Johannesburg and until 1998, worked as a freelance writer and editor, and as assistant Editor for SPEAK, a black feminist publication.

Her children’s book, The Day Gogo Went to Vote, a story about a child accompanying her grandmother to vote in the 1994 elections, won numerous awards, including the African Studies Association of America Best Children’s Book Award, and has been translated into 6 major South African languages. Her biography of Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime, was published in 2002 and was runner up in the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, and was awarded the NOMA Award for most outstanding book published in Africa in 2003. Elinor Sisulu is currently advising on projects on democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe.

Non-fiction

Redi Direko

Redi Direko was born in Soweto, Johannesburg. She studied for her first degree in Journalism and Communications, and English Literature at post-graduate level in Johannesburg. She has been a broadcast journalist for 11 years, having worked in both television and radio. She began her career as a reporter for Network Radio News and then Kaya FM, a Gauteng radio station. She went on to present a variety of programmes for the SABC and its Africa channel, where she interviewed people such as Thabo Mbeki, Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. She was the senior news anchor at eTV’s 24th satellite news channel, and has been a columnist for Fairlady magazine. She is currently the presenter of the Redi Direko Show on Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape Talk and writes a weekly socio-political column for the Sowetan newspaper, while studying for her Master’s in Literature.

Nic Dawes

Nic Dawes has worked for the Mail & Guardian from 2004. Dawes joined the newspaper as associate editor from ThisDay newspaper. As an investigative and political reporter with editing duties, he was part of the team that broke the story linking police chief Jackie Selebi to the underworld networks surrounding Brett Kebble, and also contributed extensive news and analysis on politics and economic policy. He is now the editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian weekly, and Mail & Guardian Online.

Jonathan Jansen

Jonathan Jansen is honorary professor of education at the University of the Witwatersrand and Scholar-in-Residence at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Johannesburg. He has worked as a high school science teacher and served as the dean of education at the University of Pretoria from 2001-2007. He obtained his MS in science education at Cornell University and his PhD from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar, and is widely regarded as one of the top researchers in the field of education.

A new book chronicles circumstances of the emergence of Barack Obama

President Barack Obama

A new book on the foreseen and unforeseen circumstances of the emergence of Barack Obama will be released soon. The book written by a Nigerian writer and historian E.M. Chima captures Obama as a phenomenal African American politician from Chicago and all the important issues he addressed and debated with his political opponents during his melodramatic presidential campaign, nomination and election as the first black President of the United States of America during a turbulent period in the world with millions traumatized by the tragedies of the war on terror in the Middle East, shocking socio-political scandals and dysfunctional economies of the global meltdown.

With all the Glory to the Almighty God and Father, I am dedicating my new book to Mo Abudu's Inspire Africa. The book is on the foreseen and unforeseen circumstances and events during the U.S. presidential campaign that led to the nomination and election of the first black President of the United States of Ameria.

~ Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima


Amidst political controversy and economic upheaval, Barack Obama and the American Dream offers a powerful collection of commentary that sheds light on what has become of the "American Dream." Author Michael Chima's brutal honesty paints a thought-provoking collage of one of the world's most prominent and influential leaders, impacting audiences young and old, near and far. A must-read for anyone seeking truth amidst the media muck.
-- Pamela Guerrieri; literary judge and editor

Pictures from the 2010 New York Book Expo

Pictures from the New York Book Expo

We finally had the time to post these pictures from the show. Here are pictures from our participation at the NY Book Expo in May of this year. We had eight booths at the show and over forty authors joined us to present their work. These pictures show what it is like to be and "author in the booth", or have your book at the booth.
~ From Lyn

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001039742406#!/album.php?aid=6082&id=100001039742406


or on Picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/106177034521590899033/NewYorkBookExpoAmerica2010#

Oprah's 10 Terrific Reads of 2010

1. Where the God of Love Hangs Out
By Amy Bloom
224 pages; Random House



Amy Bloom's new collection of short fiction, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, is about real-life passion—greedy, misguided, rueful, hopeful, generous to a fault. "I am the worst person in the world," thinks Clare, remorseful over poaching William from the elegant, flawless Isabel—who is not only his wife but Clare's best friend—in "The Old Impossible," one of a quartet of stories about longing, deception, and loss...


2. Just Kids
By Patti Smith
304 pages; Ecco




The singer-icon's memoir about coming of age with soul mate Robert Mapplethorpe. Funny, fascinating, oddly tender.

3. Shadow Tag
By Louise Erdrich
272 pages; Harper



No one knows what really goes on in a marriage, so complex and contradictory are human needs and desires. Usually, the misunderstandings are unintentional (and mutual), the inflictions of pain accidental. That's why Shadow Tag, by Louise Erdrich, is astonishing in its depiction of Irene America, a woman who deliberately sets out to manipulate her jealous, controlling artist-husband, not by simply betraying him but by writing and "hiding" a fictional diary that only suggests infidelity...

4. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
By Helen Simonson
368 pages; Random House



5. A Ticket to the Circus
By Norris Church Mailer
432 pages; Random House




Just how irresistible was Norman Mailer? Gloria Steinem said that anybody who would marry him couldn't be "healthy, well-adjusted, conscious, or aware"—but she was friends with him. Ditto the feminist Germaine Greer, close to him around the time Mailer was quoted as saying, "A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul..."

The shy romance between a retired British officer and a local Pakistani shopkeeper is the main plotline of Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. But this delightful debut novel is as much a gently p.c. look at the British class system tucked inside a sly comedy of manners as it is a love story. Curmudgeonly Major Ernest Pettigrew is a widower bewildered by the ways of the modern world, personified largely by his insufferably social-climbing, metrosexual adult son

6. The Invisible Bridge
By Julie Orringer
624 pages; Knopf



An old-fashioned romantic drama, Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge is as rich in historical detail as it is human in its cast of sympathetic characters. The novel begins in 1937 Budapest, where a discriminatory quota system has forced a 22-year-old Hungarian Jew named Andras Levi to seek his education abroad. He heads to architecture school in Paris, a place of modernist ferment, and finds an even fuller education in the arms of Klara Morgenstern, a 31-year-old ballet instructor and Hungarian emigre with a shadowy past...


7. Hellhound on His Trail
By Hampton Sides
480 pages; Doubleday



A meticulous account of the last days of Martin Luther King Jr. and the capture of the man who stalked and eventually killed him.


8. What Is Left the Daughter
By Howard Norman
256 pages; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt



Fans of Howard Norman's The Bird Artist will recognize the venue and the oddball characters in the author's beautiful new novel, What Is Left the Daughter. In isolated Nova Scotia during WWII, an earnest, if dim, 17-year-old named Wyatt Hillyer is orphaned when both his parents commit suicide over their love for the same woman...


9. The Madonnas of Echo Park
By Brando Skyhorse
199 pages; Free Press



Culture, identity, and politics are just a few of the threads masterfully woven through the partly autobiographical novel of linked stories that is The Madonnas of Echo Park. Author Brando Skyhorse—so named because his mother revered the famous actor—grew up in the largely Mexican-American L.A. neighborhood of the title, which explains his understanding of its residents: among them a gang member, a day laborer, and a little girl tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time...


10. Super Sad True Love Story
By Gary Shteyngart
352 pages; Random House



Do we ever truly know each other? Is intimacy possible in a culture where every interaction can be tracked and quantified by constantly updated data streams? These are the questions at the heart of Gary Shteyngart's postapocalyptic black comedy, Super Sad True Love Story...Find out more about the book in our August issue and get 17 more suggestions for summer reading.