'You get to write things the way they should be, not as they are.' An Interview with Frank Owen.

In a couple of moments, you'll be on to us. We asked both the authors that make up Frank Owen the same questions, to get a Human League, he-said, she-said effect. Neither of them was allowed to look at the other one’s answers. The results were funny, revealing and inspiring. Here's the second part of our interview of the two-headed writer - Frank Owen.

How did the decision to write a novel together come about?

DIANE: Alex begged and begged. No, seriously: We shared a publisher, Umuzi, and did the launch of his first novel The Space Race together. It was fun, so we thought we’d have a go at doing a bit of writing where people actually buy your book and it isn’t just a nice hobby for high days and holidays.

Who the fuck is Frank Owen? Tell us him as if he were a character in a novel.

DIANE: It turns out that Frank Owen is a real person, unfortunately for our Twitter handle – two real people, in fact: a journalist and a country-and-western singer. It might get a little awkward.

Our Frank is just a guy trying to get his head around the post-apocalyptic universe that is the world right now, and has been for some time. The future is now.

Frank Owen's prose style is cohesive, although your individual writing styles are quite different. Talk a bit about the process of writing together please?

DIANE: We outline the story (timeline; diagrams) and allocate characters, and Alex does a first draft of each chapter, usually just under a thousand words. Then I go in and take out all the giraffes and nuclear submarines, and put in some songs. Alex does all the lactation and menstruation bits.

South is set in an intriguing alternate history to America. The North and South remain divided, with the North separating itself from the South, much like the USA separates itself from Mexico. What inspired the setting?

DIANE: Or like the apartheid government allocated homelands in one country – or like any government internship programme using reserves. Segregation never works (unless you count single-sex high schools). We’ve overlaid a lot of American events with a not-entirely-fictional South African framework. Some of the early readers liked the idea of the ghost camps in South, where people that the rest of the country has rejected have gathered to find a workable alternative.

The science of South is real: the mushrooms; the environmental warfare; the holistic medicine; the politicking. But so is the courage and the perseverance of the ordinary people in it, we hope. We’re in dire need of that kind of leadership right now.

Both historical and fantasy novels require intense levels of research as world building plays an integral part in the suspension of a reader's disbelief. You've created a mash-up with South: part cowboy flick, part apocalypse fable, and then given yourself the added task of writing an alternate history for a country that isn't your home. No easy task.  Let's talk about research: how much? what kind? where? how?

DIANE: We’re not reinventing the wheel here: Human fear, desperation, hunger and triumph are universal, and that stuff is at the heart of any right-thinking novel. We’ve obviously been in the country briefly; we know how to use Google Earth; we use expert beta readers who tell us things like, A severed femoral artery can’t be staunched with a heated frying pan’ or ‘Mesquite would never grow on that ridge.’ That’s the beauty of speculative fiction – or any sort of fiction. You get to write things the way they should be, not as they are. This is why novels are so important, so radical: You have the chance to change the status quo. The setting is only the beginning.

And then you sell it internationally. Are you afraid of your American audience?

DIANE: I’m afraid of stereotypes of all stripes.

We heard you listened to quite a lot of country music while writing South. Did you discover any bands you think we should all be listening to?

DIANE: I’m a total noob, and I’m not ashamed of that. I seriously got into The Civil Wars while I was writing. But then I wanted some South African stuff, and I tried to remember all the folk and rock that changed me when I was much younger, and so I started digging up all the greats again, all the enlightened angels: The LED, Squeal, Boo!, Johannes Kerkorrel, Koos Kombuis, Valiant Swart. It made me remember how Afrikaans was reclaimed in the early nineties as a language of longing and redemption after segregation – what an act of courage that must have been, from these white okes who’d been sent to the army.

And of course we were lucky enough to inveigle the fantastic Gene Kierman from Miss Texas 1977 into composing some tracks for us. They're downloadable here: http://southvsnorth.com/. The band’s first album is on https://misstexas1977.bandcamp.com. The track ‘Nettles’ gives me all the feelings. The backing vocals!

Serious question. South African writers are looking for readers in other markets, choosing to write stories that have little connection to South Africa or the current South African narrative. If we're being totally honest, we're talking white South Africans. Do you think there is no home market for white writers anymore?

DIANE: All stories are fundamentally connected, or else why bother with empathy? A change in setting can be a way to find out how you really feel about the big ideas,  but the end point of any fiction is the same: to expand the experience of the reader. There’s a lot of research around at the moment that supports the idea that an intense reading experience evokes the same neural activity as actually experiencing the event. This is fucking terrifying as well as exciting, and it’s one of the ways we can talk to one another without spewing racial invective (Rage: satisfying in the moment, but not in the longer term). We can only try to understand.

I think that everything matters in the present, even if we maintain that we are products of our terrible, funny, sad, broken backgrounds. I say this as a person with a doctorate in the field: South Africa is post-traumatic. Every interaction, every conversation takes us immediately into the past, the same way a rape survivor can be continually thrown back into re-experiencing the horror. But we must face it in our private and public lives, face it and resolve it, because we have to live with ourselves. The government is not going to do it for us, although the TRC did try. That’s what South is about, too – historical debt and responsibility: male and female; black and white; love and mercy.

If I was a literary tourist and you were my guide, where would you direct me to find the best writing in South Africa right now?

DIANE: Genna Gardini, T.O. Molefe, Thando Mgqolozana, William Dicey, Kagiso Lesego Molope, Sean O’Toole and Nick Mulgrew

On Diane's Bedside Table

William Dicey’s Poor Dizzy Spooks, one of the essays in his collection, Mongrel, Steven Robins' Letters of Stone and Jolyn Phillips’ Tjieng Tjang Tjerries. 

Diane Awerbuck wrote Gardening at Night, which was awarded the Commonwealth Best First Book Award (Africa and the Caribbean). Her work has been translated into Mandarin, German, French, Russian and Swedish. Awerbuck’s short stories are collected in Cabin Fever and from it the story ‘Phosphorescence’ was shortlisted for the 2014 Caine Prize. Another ‘Leatherman’ won the 2015 Short Story Day Africa Prize. Awerbuck’s latest novel is Home Remedies. More of her, in the form of poetry and interviews are at http://aerodrome.co.za/tag/diane-awerbuck/.

See Frank Owen at Kalk Bay Books on the 11th of August or at The Book Lounge on 17th August for the launch of South. Claire Robertson will be in conversation with Frank. If you want come along only because you're a fan of Claire Robertson, that's okay too.

Interview by Rachel Zadok a.k.a @rachelzadok

'...America almost feels to me like a genre in itself.' An Interview with Frank Owen.

Rivalry is rife in writing. Famous battles have included Ernest Hemingway vs. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gabriel Garcia Marquez vs. Mario Vargas Llosa and Charlotte Brontë vs. Jane Austen. So were interested to find out how two great writers, Diane Awerbuck and Alex Latimer succeeded in writing South, such a fine novel, without so much as a punch or broken nib. Here's the first part of our interview of the two-headed writer - Frank Owen.

How did the decision to write a novel together come about?

ALEX: Writing my first novel was really difficult – mostly because it was such an isolating experience. I spent a year in my own head. I wanted to find a way of making the process of writing my second novel more fun and more interactive and so when I met Diane through my book launch, this co-writing idea came up. We co-wrote a short story for FunDza as a trial run, to see if it could work – and then we began on South.

So who the fuck is Frank Owen? Tell us as if he were a character in a novel.

ALEX: Frank Owen used to work at the Post Office. He’s almost sixty now. He used to see lots of people everyday. He saw them licking stamps and sending their virus-laden saliva across the country, mostly to distant loved ones. It got him thinking about viruses in America and he began researching how long contagions could live between a stamp and an envelope. That was the kernel that sparked South. Frank’s biggest secret is that he was born in Canada.

Frank Owen's prose style is cohesive, although your individual writing styles are quite different. Talk a bit about the process of writing together please?

ALEX: The key for us is to understand our roles. I’m the plot guy and Diane is the style and voice guy. Of course there’s always cross-over, but it’s helpful to know who’s in charge of what. I’d occasionally tell Diane that some action in the book absolutely needed to happen and when she wanted to know why, I couldn’t say exactly. There’s a lot of trust involved.

South is set in an intriguing alternate history to America. The North and South remain divided, with the North separating itself from the South, much like the USA separates itself from Mexico. What inspired the setting?

ALEX: South, and the follow-up novel – North, deal with the idea of segregation in society. With segregation being the first step toward depersonalising brutality. As South Africans born during Apartheid we’re obviously not unfamiliar with the realities of that. Setting the story in America sheds a different light on the topic. An interesting light, I hope.

Both historical and fantasy novels require intense levels of research as world building plays an integral part in the suspension of a reader's disbelief. You've created a mash-up with South: part cowboy flick, part apocalypse fable, and then given yourself the added task of writing an alternate history for a country that isn't your home. No easy task.  Let's talk about research: how much? what kind? where? how?

ALEX: Diane and I spoke about this a lot. There was a sense of fraudulence about writing a book set in a place neither of us had spent any meaningful time in. But weirdly, when we started writing South, America didn’t feel like a foreign setting. As a white South African, I grew up on a relentless diet of American culture through film, literature and marketing  – so much so that America almost feels to me like a genre in itself. I probably know America better than I know South Africa in some senses. So with that intense cultural colonisation, a bit of Google Earth (Street View is amazing) and some intense internetting – the whole thing came together.

And then you sell it internationally. Are you afraid of your American audience?

ALEX: Not afraid. Intrigued by what their response will be. The world of South is deliberately different from real America.

Did you watch cowboy movies as a child? If yes, what were your favourites?

ALEX: I came late to cowboy movies – but I certainly watched a few classics while writing South - Once Upon a Time in the West, The Searchers. But I also discovered Reel Injun, a documentary about how Native Americans were and still are portrayed in cowboy films – and the devastating effects of that portrayal. It’s the other side of the cowboy story. If cowboy films are North, then Reel Injun is South.

Serious question. South African writers are looking for readers in other markets, choosing to write stories that have little connection to South Africa or the current South African narrative. If we're being totally honest, we're talking white South Africans. Do you think there is no home market for white writers anymore?

ALEX: I’m not sure there’s been much of a market in South Africa for a while. When I first started meeting local writers I asked each of them the same question, “Why do you do it?” Because I know it’s not about the money – there’s hardly any. And there’s not a whole heap of fame going around either. My basic conclusion was that most local writers suffer from a compulsion to write. Setting the odd novel overseas in order to support their habit is not a sin and it’s not unpatriotic. It’s simply a means for writers to keep writing.

If I was a literary tourist and you were my guide, where would you direct me to find the best writing in South Africa right now?

ALEX: Claire Robertson, Kgebetli Moele, Ivan Vladislavic

On Alex's Bedside Table

The Shining and White Fang. And Ramona the Pest which I've been reading to my daughter.

Alex Latimer writes and illustrates children’s picture books, which have been published and translated around the world. His third book, Lion vs Rabbit won the Hampshire Picture Book Award and was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal. In 2013 he published his debut novel, The Space Race. Lauren Beukes called it ‘witty with twisted charm and a whole lot of action.’ Last year, Alex wrote the prize-winning short story ‘A Fierce Symmetry’ for the continent-wide competition run by Short Story Day Africa in 2016. Find him at http://www.alexlatimer.co.za.

See Frank Owen at Kalk Bay Books on the 11th of August or at The Book Lounge on 17th August for the launch of South. Claire Robertson will be in conversation with Frank. If you want come along only because you're a fan of Claire Robertson, that's okay too.

Interview by Rachel Zadok a.k.a @rachelzadok

'What keeps me coming back mostly is the scrutiny.' #WriterPrompt Winner: A mini-interview with Gabriel G Odigiri.

I was in a fiery lit room. Between sturdily latched elevated steel doors and a heavily smoked inland.

I stomped over a pavement. Red patches on the floor. The lower lane was covered with hibernated debris and the ridges were whitewashed like a faded blue blouse.

I was taunted by the flickering red lights and the strong smell of sulphur and nitrous oxide in the room.

I was quite drowsy and faltered into the shades of the deeming frame of the inner square room.

I heard indistinct howling from the inner square room that stretched to the main room. I presumed, it was the blizzard approaching from north to our inland.

For a moment I thought of Mount Rio. At the death of winter and the eve of summer. A breath of departed cold wind. Waxing sun. Autumn birds tormenting the eaves of our house. The healing power of the matutinal moon.

A rising flame pulled me into the frame. Where the howling sounded more like a ghost's whisper in the wind.

I nudged myself back up, after I flopped on the concrete floor hailing to the sound of distant footfalls.

I swirled right. Managed to balance my weight on the twirl. Managed to hide away from burgeoning shadows. Where surreally, broken bricks reels beneath from where I stood.

I was in a fiery lit room, when a thousand old shackles broke. Never did I imagine, I walked miles at the dead of the sun on a deserted bridge. I was yet to cross.

Gab is one of the most regular participants of #WriterPrompt and we've enjoyed seeing his writing evolve and his unique literary visions.

You have been one of the most committed members of #WriterPrompt. What keeps you coming back?

GAB: #WriterPrompt, is a platform that gives young aspiring African writers the opportunity to showcase their talent and hone their writing skills, that is certain. For me, it gives me the opportunity to meet young African writers like myself. Get to see their style of writing and learn from them. Also, to see if indeed I suffice as a writer. What keeps me coming back mostly is the scrutiny. I learn every time I post 200 word flash fiction on the platform.

What are some of your writing goals?

GAB: Writing is a thing I have come to love so much. And seem to be a bit good at. I have always loved stories and always wanted to tell my stories. I had a mystical childhood. I love to write about my childhood. I am a victim of bullying. I always expressed my pain through writing. As you know, I am fascinated by Post-Apocalyptic stories. I wonder how it would be in Africa. I aim to write stories about the past dictatorial Nigerian regime, the insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria, Niger Delta militancy etc. In a long run, I aim to delve into screenwriting, into a genre, most writers in this part of the world shy away from.

What are you currently reading?   

GAB: I am currently reading Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White.

Gab G Odigiri is a young Nigerian writer and Philosophy graduate from Niger Delta University. He was exposed to works by Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Okara, Ben Okri, Elechi Amadi, Camera Laye, Ken Saro-Wiwa from an early age because of his late father’s love for African literature. Gab is very fascinated by the works of Dan Brown and H.P. Lovecraft. He cites his influences in African literature as Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Helon Habila. Gab lives with his hard-working mother in Nigeria’s capital and hopes to become a well-known writer one day. He has several unpublished pieces of short fiction.

'...You write from the heart and not from the head.' An Interview with Rehana Rossouw.

What Will People Say? follows the Fourie family trying to carve out a "decent" life in the Cape Flats. One of the most sobering aspects of this novel is the way the story gently lays out the fact that the mantra, "Get an education," is not always enough to lift people's lives out of such circumstances. In fact, after finishing the book it made me realise how championing the idea that, if you stay in school, you'll automatically succeed risks cheapening and simplifying the hurdles families face when navigating the townships and, for many, poverty. Could you expand upon this, please?

REHANA: Well, the long list of apartheid legislation shrunk the aspirations  – and the lives – of everyone who wasn’t white in South Africa. The government spent far less on the education of black children than white children, black teachers required fewer skills than white teachers and “bush” universities were built for blacks after they were excluded from other universities. And then there was job reservation, which ensured that low-skilled whites did not have compete with educated blacks for many thousands of jobs. All of those laws remained in place until 1994, and we can still see that damage to human aspiration in our hugely unequal society today.

Religion plays an interesting role in your book: as a sanctuary that offers people support, comfort and hope along with being a destructive element that can harm people and break up families. This was neatly mirrored by gangs, who also provide sanctuary, comfort and community, while also bringing sinister damage to the people and area they operate in. Was this parallel drawn on purpose, or did it naturally emerge with the writing of the novel?

REHANA: It wasn’t drawn on purpose, but when I realised the similarities in the recruitment practices of the gangs, the church and the comrades, I sharpened this a little in my final draft. All of them have a language, uniform and ties that bind. At the church camp, Kevin and Nicky sing different versions of the same song; they are “volunteers for Jesus/MK”. All the gangsters’ jeans hang below their underwear and they sabela to each other. Each of these sectors of society recruit township youth and shun them when they leave the fold.

Near the beginning of What Will People Say? are the lines:

"Her childhood was ending and it was time to learn to be a woman. The lessons started with Mummy teaching her to iron shirts."

The story is set in 1986. Has the understanding of what it means to be a woman progressed past this mindset? Or are chores still being split down genderlines as much now as they were then?

REHANA: I haven’t seen research about chores split down gender lines across the country, the only statistic I know of is from the HSRC (Human Sciences Research Council) which found that the vast majority of children are being raised in single parent (female) households. But I am willing to put my head on the block and say that family chores are still the preserve of women. I do find it very strange that women raise men in the absence of their fathers yet teach their boys to believe that they are superior to women, and that all women are put on earth to serve them.

What Will People Say? is your debut novel. How did the editing process for your book compare to the editing you experience in your work as a journalist?

REHANA: Writing literature is a vastly different experience to journalism. My daily work is often formulaic - ensuring there are five w’s and an h in every story, that the lead sentence encapsulates the entire story, that it is in reported speech and that all the parties involved get their say. With creative writing you use a completely different set of muscles, you write from the heart and not from the head (which is hugely difficult, I found).

What Will People Say? made the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature shortlist, a huge achievement, along with being nominated for other awards. Has the limelight helped motivate you to pen another book?  

REHANA: Yes, I am writing my next book and I do have an agreement with a publisher.

On Rehana's Bedside

When I am writing I can’t read great literature, I get too depressed about my pitiful attempts at matching great writers or I imitate them shamelessly. I took time off from writing recently and read Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 which is so poetic, it almost convinced me I was a pathetic excuse for a writer.

But there’s always a long list of non fiction to read when I’m writing. I’m somewhat belatedly reading Pumla Gqola’s Rape: A South African Nightmare. I can’t read more than a page or two at a time – I have never read a book this slowly – because it is so painful and so true. We live among monsters in South Africa, our lives are so stunted by our fear of them.

Rehana Rossouw was born in Cape Town and is currently living in Johannesburg. She is a journalist and has a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie

'I was embarrassed about writing when I started out...' A Quick Q&A with Lester San #WriterPrompt Winner.

No one mocks a task, come noon.
At first they labelled him a kook, but with time Our Dad has come to be loved, exalted, deified. His tenet that beauty lay in our imperfection resonated.
He was known as The Rotator. His sense of balance was sharp to the point of cutting, his radar alert to proportion. In his civic landscape, we dwell on Level Eight where the earth is red.
The soil is redder at Level Zero.
tat-tar-rat-tat
The soil is redder at Level Zero.
In his civic landscape, we dwell on Level Eight where the earth is red. His sense of balance was sharp to the point of cutting, his radar alert to proportion. He was known as The Rotator.
His tenet that beauty lay in our imperfection resonated. At first they labelled him a kook, but with time Our Dad has come to be loved, exalted, deified.
No one mocks a task, come noon.

"Often indecisive, occasionally self-loathing, but always positive," is how Lester describes himself. "I'm in it for the long haul," is his motto when it comes to writing.

How has your writing evolved since we last interviewed you in July 2015?

SAN: I'm teaching English as a second language and apart from the usual skills I try to develop in my students an awareness of their abilities, their strengths, and their faults. More so than hasty progress I think that awareness will always serve you well.   

I like to think that over the past few months, instead of making massive leaps and improving as a writer, I have developed a more acute awareness. For example, I cringe more than before.

Why use a pseudonym and why does the pseudonym change?

SAN: I've changed it because my early drafts are always crap. I was embarrassed about writing when I started out and even now few of my friends or family know. But I'm using my real first name.

On Lester's Beside Table

I always have a book of Chekov's short stories at hand. Found two books I should have read years ago: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin and The Immoralist by Andre Gidé.  At the moment, I'm halfway through the demanding prose of Yukio Mishima's Spring Snow.

Participate in #WriterPrompt by following Short Story Day Africa on Facebook. 

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie