Tag: Award Winner
Publisher: Modjaji Books, South Africa
Pages: 170
Year: 2013
Category: Literature, Short Stories
Dimensions: 203 x 127 mm
Running and Other Stories
Running and other Stories won the Nadine Gordimer SALA Short story Award in 2014.
Turning her back on what is considered conventional, Makhosazana Xaba engages with her subject-matter on a revolutionary level in Running and Other Stories. She takes tradition – be that literary tradition, cultural tradition, gender tradition – and re-imagines it in a way that is liberating and innovative. Bracketed by Xaba’s revisitings of Can Themba’s influential short story, The Suit, the ten stories in this collection, while strongly independent, are in conversation with one another, resulting in a collection that can be devoured all at once or savoured slowly, story by story. By re-envisioning the ordinary and accepted, Xaba is creating a space in which women’s voices are given a rebirth.
£24.00 – £25.00
About the author
MAKHOSAZANA
XABA is the author of two poetry collections: these hands (2005) and,
Tongues of their Mothers (2008). Her poetry has been anthologized
widely, translated into Italian, Mandarin and Turkish and also available
from the Cambridge Poetry Archive. She is the editor of, Like the
untouchable wind: An anthology of poems (2016). Her collection of
collection of fiction, Running & other stories (2013), won the SALA
Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2014. Her short story “Running” won
the Deon Hofmeyr Prize for Creative Writing in 2005 and was
anthologised in, 20 Best Short Stories of South Africa’s Democracy, in
2014. She has co-edited three anthologies; Proudly Malawian: Life
Stories from lesbian and gender-nonconforming individuals (2016) and
Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction (2013) which won the 26th Lambda
Literary Award for the fiction anthology category in 2014 and was
translated in Spanish in the same year. In 2017, Queer Africa 2: New
Fiction is coming out. Xaba holds an MA in Writing (with distinction)
from The University of the Witwatersrand.
Review
“Writing in a language that is clear and lucid, in a style that is flowing and smooth while exploring difficult, diverse experiences and occurrences that many writers would rather keep silent about, Makhosazana Xaba has achieved a rare feat. She should, once again, be applauded for her immense artistic contribution to South African literature and adding to the growing number of writers who make readers think about the socio-political conditions in our country.”
VM Sisi Maqagi, English Studies, NMMU
