The Johannesburg Review of Books

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The Johannesburg Review of Books
Johannesburg Review of Books logo.png
EditorJennifer Malec
Categories Literature, African literature, Photography
FrequencyBi-monthy (6 issues per year)
PublisherBen Williams
Founded2017;6 years ago (2017)
First issue1 May 2017
CountrySouth Africa
Based in Johannesburg
LanguageEnglish
Website johannesburgreviewofbooks.com

The Johannesburg Review of Books (or JRB) is a South African online magazine based on other literary magazines such as the New York and London Review of Books . Its bi-monthly issues include reviews, essays, poetry, photographs, and short fiction focused predominantly but not exclusively on South Africa and other African countries.

Contents

History

The Johannesburg Review of Books was founded in 2017, and released its first issue in May of that year. [1] The writers Achmat Dangor, Ivan Vladislavic, and Makhosazana Xaba were founding patrons. [2]

The founders of the JRB included former editors of South African literary website BooksLIVE (now the "Books" section of The Sunday Times), as well as several African writers and authors. [3]

Editor Jennifer Malec made reference to other literary magazines like the London, Los Angeles, and New York Review of Books as having inspired the founding of the JRB. She said: "But there is no Nairobi Review of Books, no Kinshasa Review of Books. In fact, there is no ‘review of books’ based in an African city. We want to provide a space for cultural criticism on global literature and the arts originating from Johannesburg, southern Africa and Africa." [1] Publisher Ben Williams wrote in a blog post introducing the magazine that its aim was "to fill a conspicuous gap in world letters" and that its informal slogans were "your desultory literary companion from South Africa" and "Africa writes back". [4] Malec and Williams have also expressed a desire to nurture critical and creative talent from Africa, and have said that paying contributors is a priority for the magazine. [5]

The first issue included — among other things — reviews of Koleka Putuma's poetry collection Collective Amnesia and Naomi Alderman's novel The Power , portraits of Binyavanga Wainaina and Niq Mhlongo (the magazine's city editor), and poetry by Rustum Kozain (its poetry editor). [6]

Contributions to the magazine have been nominated for various awards, including five nominations for the Brittle Paper Awards in 2018. [5]

Contributors

As of May 2022, when the JRB published its fiftieth issue, it had published work from over 400 contributors. [7] Notable contributors have included:

Some of the magazine's noteworthy contributors are on its masthead as editors or patrons. [8] These include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Binyavanga Wainaina</span> Kenyan writer and editor (1971–2019)

Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina was a Kenyan author, journalist and 2002 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2003, he was the founding editor of Kwani? literary magazine. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual Time 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World".

<i>Kwani?</i> African literary magazine

Kwani? is a prominent African literary magazine headquartered in Kenya. It has been hailed as "undoubtedly the most influential journal to have emerged from sub-Saharan Africa".

Chimurenga is a publication of arts, culture and politics from and about Africa and its diasporas, founded and edited by Ntone Edjabe. Both the magazine's name and the content capture the connection between African cultures and politics on the continent and beyond.

Makhosazana Xaba is a South African poet and short-story writer. She trained as a nurse and has worked a women's health specialist in NGOs, as well as writing on gender and health. She is Associate Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg.

The Ingrid Jonker Prize is a literary prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry. It was instituted in honor of Ingrid Jonker after her death in 1965.

Niq Mhlongo is a South African journalist, editor, writer and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zukiswa Wanner</span> South African journalist, novelist and editor (born 1976)

Zukiswa Wanner is a South African journalist, novelist and editor born in Zambia and now based in Kenya. Since 2006, when she published her first book, her novels have been shortlisted for awards including the South African Literary Awards (SALA) and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In 2015, she won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for London Cape Town Joburg (2014). In 2014, Wanner was named on the Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature. In 2020, she was awarded the Goethe Medal alongside Ian McEwan and Elvira Espejo Ayca, making Wanner the first African woman to win the award.

Kwela Books is a South African publishing house founded in Cape Town in 1994 as a new imprint of NB Publishers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noni Jabavu</span> South African writer and journalist (1919–2008)

Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu was a South African writer and journalist, one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books of autobiography. Educated in Britain from the age of 13, she became the first African woman to be the editor of a British literary magazine when in 1961 she took on the editorship of The New Strand, a revived version of The Strand Magazine, which had closed in 1950.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey</span> Zimbabwean editor and literary critic (born 1966)

Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.

The South African Literary Awards (SALA) have been awarded annually since 2005 to exceptional South African writers. They "pay tribute to South African writers who have distinguished themselves as ground-breaking producers and creators of literature" and celebrate "literary excellence in the depiction and sharing of South Africa’s histories, value systems, philosophies and art." The Awards are open to work in all of South Africa's eleven official languages, and they may include posthumous honours.

B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing was a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular – Search Sweet Country (1986) and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) – were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words.

Kelwyn Sole is a South African poet and academic.

Nick Mulgrew is a South African-British novelist, poet, and editor. In addition to his writing, he is the founder and director of the poetry press uHlanga.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aké Arts and Book Festival</span> Annual literary event in Nigeria

The Aké Arts and Book Festival is a literary and artistic event held annually in Nigeria. It was founded in 2013 by Lola Shoneyin, a Nigerian writer and poet, in Abeokuta. It features new and established writers from across the world, and its primary focus has been to promote, develop, and celebrate the creativity of African writers, poets, and artists. The Aké Arts and Book Festival has been described as the African continent's biggest annual gathering of literary writers, editors, critics, and readers. The festival has an official website and a dedicated magazine, known as the Aké Review.

Efemia Chela is a Zambian-Ghanaian writer, literary critic, and editor. "Chicken", her first published story, was shortlisted for the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing. Chela has had short stories and poems published in New Internationalist, Wasafiri, Token and Pen Passages: Africa. In 2016, she co-edited the Short Story Day Africa collection, Migrations. She was also the Andrew W. Mellon Writer-in-Residence at Rhodes University in 2018. She is currently the Francophone and Contributing editor for The Johannesburg Review of Books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Koleka Putuma</span>

Koleka Putuma is a South African queer poet and theatre-maker. She was nominated one of Okay Africa's most influential women in 2019.

Maneo Refiloe Mohale is a queer South African Black feminist writer, editor, and poet. They have written for various local and international publications including Jalada, Prufrock, The Beautiful Project, The Mail & Guardian and spectrum.za. Their debut collection of poetry Everything is a deathly flower was published in September 2019 with uHlanga press. In 2020, Mohale was shortlisted for the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize, making them the youngest finalist of that year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alistair Mackay (writer)</span>

Alistair Mackay is a South African novelist, short story writer and columnist. His debut novel It Doesn't Have To Be This Way was chosen by Brittle Paper as one of the 100 Notable African Books of 2022 and was long-listed for the British Science Fiction Association Award for best novel in 2023.

References

  1. 1 2 Ferreira, Jonathan (2017-06-14). "The Johannesburg Review of Books". SA Booksellers Association. Archived from the original on 2023-05-20. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  2. Lever, Carla (2018-01-29). ""We think it's important that the world becomes more aware of what readers in Africa are thinking" – a Q&A with the Johannesburg Review of Books editor, Jennifer Malec". BooksLIVE. Archived from the original on 2023-05-21. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
  3. Murua, James (2017-04-28). "World Exclusive: The Johannesburg Review of Books debuts on May 1, 2017". James Murua's Literature Blog. Archived from the original on 2022-12-06.
  4. Williams, Ben (2017-04-30). "Welcome to The Johannesburg Review of Books". The Johannesburg Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2023-05-20. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  5. 1 2 Mugo, Delfhin (2020-09-21). "Johannesburg Review of Books is Africa's Destination for Critics and Book Lovers". Brittle Paper . Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  6. Malec, Jennifer (2017-05-01). "The Johannesburg Review of Books Vol. 1, Issue 1 (May 2017)". The Johannesburg Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2023-05-21. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  7. Williams, Ben (2022-05-02). "The JRB: five years, 50 issues, 425 contributors". The Johannesburg Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2023-05-21. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
  8. "The JRB Masthead". The Johannesburg Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2023-04-26. Retrieved 2023-05-21.