Time of the Writer Festival focuses on publishing issues

Acknowledging publishing as one of the central elements in the development of a local literary culture, a rich line up of speakers will participate in the Publishing Forum at this year's annual Time of the Writer international writers festival, which is hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

16 Mar 2012

The intensive programme, which is free and open to the public and aspirant writers, takes place on Thursday, 22 March.

Festival writer Ronnie Kasrils kicks off the forum in the session titled Writing Self, shedding light on the art of the autobiography and biography. He is followed by fellow festival writer, Kwame Dawes (Peepal Tree Press), who offers an overview of trends and challenges for publishing enterprises, print and online.

The Publishing Forum also includes well-known SAFM radio host and City Press journalist Karabo Kgoleng who will talk about getting your books into the public domain, optimising translation and the marketing landscape. Deputy director of books and publishing at the Department of Arts
and Culture, Siphiwo Mahala, leads a discussion titled The Challenges of Indigenous Language Publishing where he offers insight in this particular publishing landscape.

Workshops offer interaction with writers

A key component of the festival is the wide-reaching day activities spread across Durban and surrounding areas. These activities, in the form of a range of workshops and seminars, are free of charge and offer pertinent interaction between festival writers, scholars and community members. For example, workshops taking place at the BAT Centre on Saturday, 24 March, are just a glimpse of the exchange of artistic perspectives and processes that are enabled through the festival.

While the popular Creative Writing Workshop gives aspirant writers first-hand insight on the creative processes that inform festival writers' literary works, Kwame Dawes shares his exceptional knowledge about reggae legend, Bob Marley, in a talk titled The Lyrics, Art, Political and Cultural Importance of Bob Marley and Reggae.

Time of the Writer festival takes place from 19 to 24 March and the full programme of workshops and theatre presentations is available at www.cca.ukzn.ac.za.