Thando Njovane

Toni Plays the Dozens | Namwali Serpell What’s so funny about Toni Morrison?

“Toni Morrison was funny as hell,” Namwali Serpell writes. “[She] makes no bones about making jest of incest, lynching, murder, even infanticide in many of her works.”

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes review – this final novel is a slippery affair Memoir merges with fiction as the author reflects on failed love, ageing and the end of life in this last instalment to his writing career

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes review – this final novel is a slippery affair

Feather By Feather: On Life, Death, and Birding A few days after my brother died, I sat in the living room of a dead house and made eye contact with a bird.  It’d been raining that day: the world outside had been coated in a wet, pewter varnish,…

“I don’t know if I believe in signs. But in that moment, I needed one.” On the cycle of life, death, and birding.

All the Sad Unliterary Men | Kevin Power David Szalay’s recent novel Flesh captures with unsparing accuracy the consciousness of an ordinary man in helpless decline.

David Szalay’s “Flesh is an attempt to write richly about a hollow man, in that hollow man’s own impoverished language.” —Kevin Power https://go.nybooks.com/49DpGvp

June Feature: “Humanity and endemic plastic” by Tessilim Adjayi
More than an artistic exploration, this photo is a call to action against plastic pollution in African ecologies. It urges communities to reject plastic and adopt sustainable alternatives.

Anne Carson · Poem: ‘Lieu Vague’

how would you describe this century so far
𝘢𝘭𝘭-𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨
famously you have spoken of the uselessness of interviews
𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘐
can you
𝘪𝘧 𝘸𝘦
I wanted to use the word ‘labyrinthine’

‘Lieu Vague’, a poem by Anne Carson.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Last week, Cinema Africa hosted a screening of Fanon at Cineplex Bayreuth, followed by a discussion led by Thierry Boudjekeu and Marie Tsogo together with the film’s director, Jean-Claude Barny. Cinema Africa will be back in January 2026! @unibayreuth.bsky.social

Feels like a good, completely random time to re-share these. 30% off my new book, pre-orders of which I’m told will ship soon!

@lizzyattree.bsky.social you’re welcome ☺️❤️

Thanks to the marketing team at @princetonupress.bsky.social you can pre-order my new book at 30% off! Just use code P329 at checkout, and feel free to share.

Book link is here: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Animist Poetics

Animist Poetics: Ancestral Trauma and Regeneration in African Literature is in print! The paperback will be out in Feb. Please request that your library order a copy. 30% off with the discount code SNWF25. @sunypress.bsky.social @rcolesworthy.bsky.social

sunypress.edu/Books/A/Anim...

Animism, in Theory

I wrote this blogpost for @sunypress.bsky.social about the process of writing my book, Animist Poetics: Ancestral Trauma and Regeneration in African Literature, which is out now. sunypress.edu/Blog/2025/An...

Can’t not be excited about a COVER! An “if you know you know” kind of design, and otherwise, elegant suggestion. So grateful yet again to the talented team at @princetonupress.bsky.social.

Love a good mid-summer cover reveal!

to cherish cuteness is to honor the most gentle part of your being a plush rabbit next to a real one

@ryantopper.bsky.social hi 👋🏾

YouTube video by Fleetwood Mac Fleetwood Mac - Landslide (Live) (Official Video) [HD]

@lizzyattree.bsky.social 💖💖💖 youtu.be/WM7-PYtXtJM?...

Paris Made My Cheeks Hurt: On Relearning the Colonizer’s Language Moving to Paris made my cheeks hurt. After a decade since I’d last worked in France, I found myself back in the land of one of my ancestors’ other colonizers. My Broca’s area could still conjure th…

“I wasn’t in Paris to avenge my postcolonial trauma but that wasn’t NOT on the table, either.” Benedict Nguyen on (re)learning the colonizer’s language.

Sigrid Nunez on the Beauty of Narrative Restraint The award-winning author of “The Friend” explains why some of the recent books that she admires most are ones in which not much happens.

Sigrid Nunez, a writer I have admired and whose books I've loved for a long time, has included my novel in her New Yorker list of recommendations and now I want to read every one of them.

Anne Enright · I stab and stab: Helen Garner’s Diaries The diaries filled me with nostalgia for all the bollocks we had to listen to back in the day; the interminable wrangle...

‘This is Helen Garner! A woman fluent in French, who compares translations of Rilke for fun. Like the protagonists of her novels, the writer of these diaries is a resourceful, socially skilled woman.’

Anne Enright (@thewrengirl.bsky.social) on the Australian novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Note

Written on the Body

Which url is working?

Anne Carson · Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind This​ is an essay about hands and handwriting. I think of handwriting as a way to organise thought into shapes. I like...

‘Scribbled, scrawled, gauche, idle, unlovely – the hand is no one’s, or everyone’s, or mythic, or just a stain left behind by something written there before. You cannot get away from yourself in your own hand.’

Anne Carson in the next issue, online early: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

10/10 😍

Kevin Young on James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” The essay served as a definitive diagnosis of American race relations. Events soon gave it the force of prophecy.

In his 1962 essay, “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” James Baldwin dissects the mentality of white Americans: “not only overt racists but the sort likely to be well-meaning readers of The New Yorker,” Kevin Young writes.

@katehighman.bsky.social

Steamy reading recommendations for Valentine's Day...

thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...