BookRising

Themes of food in literature inspire questions of resistance, cultural memory, gender and identity. This episode titled  Khayali Pulao: On Food Writing  touches upon food and food politics in Indian writing. Here, it is not merely a marker of identity, but can be a source of joy as well as pain and alienation. Writers Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Sumana Roy discuss the ways i...

India’s borders and borderlands have been marked by conflict since its independence from the British in 1947. Kashmir and the Northeast regions of India along with many forgotten enclave areas have been witness to relentless violence that have upended lives for several decades. How does literature from these war zones represent the conflict and people’s experiences? More specifically, how do write...

Writer Margo Jefferson and poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley join BookRising host Bhakti Shringarpure to talk about their recent books which won the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023. The authors speak about crafting aesthetically innovative, genre-bending and political works. They also weigh in on particular challenges for Black women in the world of publishing and the importance of mentoring and camaraderie...

India is home to the world’s largest film industry that instrumentalizes soft power to generate all kinds of imperial fantasies and aspirations. It has historically been plagued by a pernicious nationalism wherein the othering, vilification and downright humiliation of religions, races, ethnicities and castes is normalized. A recent spate of blockbusters as well as several smaller films on streami...

Are you shocked and distressed about the way in which war and displacement is being represented, reported and talked about right now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Writers, journalists, activists, scholars, Bhakti Shringarpure, Nadifa Mohamed, Suchitra Vijayan and Billy Kahora think through this difficult topic. Recorded on March 25, 2022, they intervene in the moral and political crisis ar...

Episode 10 of the Radical Publishing Futures series features Meg Arenberg in conversation with Ra Page of Comma Press, based in Manchester, UK. They discuss Comma Press's exclusive focus on short story anthologies, what this kind of specialization allows the press to do, and the particular affordances of short fiction as a literary form, which Ra argues is a route to a more democratic literary spa...

This BookRising episode celebrates the translation and publication of revolutionary Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani's works of literary criticism. Translated into English by Mahmoud Najib for the first time since publication in 1967, Kanafani's On Zionist Literature analyzes the corpus of literature written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The book includes a preface by Ann...

Meg Arenberg speaks to writer Sonia Nimr and translator Marcia Lynx Qualey about the translation, editing and publication of Thunderbird, Nimr's speculative fiction trilogy. In this series, teen girl protagonist Noor finds herself hurtled into a fast-paced time-traveling adventure where magical worlds and mythology is combined with Palestinian history. Nimr explained that the trilogy was inspired...

Literature experts Bhakti Shringarpure and Ainehi Edoro discuss and dissect 2022's shortlisted Booker Prize novels in advance of the winner announcement for the world's most prestigious literary prize. The shortlist includes Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Ireland), Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (UK), The Trees by Percival Everett (USA), The Seven M...

In this episode of the Radical Publishing Futures series, host Meg Arenberg speaks with Nathan Rostron of Restless Books. Still a relatively young press, Restless has moved in the opposite direction of many publishers: originating as an exclusively digital publisher that has recently moved to print publication of international literature, from novels to memo...

Nigerian-American writer Chinelo Okparanta joins host Bhakti Shringarpure for an episode of BookRising as part of our Trailblazing African Feminists series. Okparanta was born in Nigeria and moved to the United States when she was 10 years old. She rose to prominence with her short story collection Happiness, Like Water (2013) which was a bittersweet reflection on the lives of Nigerian women livin...

The 8th episode of the Radical Publishing Futures series features Dzekashu MacViban, writer, editor and founder of Bakwa Magazine. Guest host Bhakti Shringarpure speaks with him about how it all began and the ways in which they adapt to the changing publishing landscape. Bakwa magazine was founded in 2011 in Yaoundé, Cameroon with the goal of infusing energy into the literary and cultural life of...

The Radical Publishing Futures series continues with a conversation between Meg Arenberg and Fazeela Jiwa, Acquisitions and Development Editor for the Canadian press Fernwood Publishing, based in Halifax and Winnipeg. Fazeela describes a bit of the press’s history from its founding by Errol Sharpe in 1992 to what she calls its second iteration in the twenty-first century, including a turn toward r...

Writer, poet and painter, Véronique Tadjo joins host Bhakti Shringarpure for an episode of BookRising as part of the Trailblazing African Feminists series. Tadjo was born in Paris and grew up Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire. She holds a PhD in African American Literature and Civilization and has juggled an academic career with writing as well as painting. She has held faculty positions at the University...

For the 6th episode in our Radical Publishing Futures series, host Bhakti Shringarpure meets up with Andariya's co-founder Omnia Shawkat in Khartoum, Sudan. Andariya was founded in 2015 in both Sudan and South Sudan, and eventually branched out into Uganda. Andariya focuses on "contemporary life" in the two Sudans and in East Africa, more broadly. They describe themselves as a "bilingual digital c...

Somali-Italian writer Ubah Cristina Ali Farah joins host Bhakti Shringarpure for an episode of BookRising as part of the Trailblazing African Feminists series. In this wide-ranging and intellectually rigorous conversation, Farah speaks about living in Somalia and Italy, and the ways in which Italy has only recently begun to reckon with their colonial past. She is the author of three novels: Madre...

In this episode Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, Ghanaian feminist writer and blogger joins our guest host Rudo Mudiwa to talk about her groundbreaking anthology  The Sex Lives of African Women . The conversation begins with Sekyiamah's award-winning blog  Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women  that underwent a change in form to become a print anthology....

In our fifth episode of the Radical Publishing Futures series, Meg Arenberg interviews Kenyan publisher Firoze Manji, founder of Daraja Press. Reflecting on his 25 years in editing and publishing, including his work as founder and editor in chief of the prize-winning pan African social justice newsletter and website, Pambazuka News and its book publishing arm, Pambazuka Press, Manji describes...

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi joins host Bhakti Shringarpure for an episode of BookRising that features trailblazing African feminist writers. Makumbi is a Ugandan writer and has published two critically acclaimed novels Kintu (2014) and A Girl is a Body of Water (2020). She is also the author of a collection of stories titled Manchester Happened (2019) and the recipient of prestigious awards such as...

Founded in 1982, Seagull Books is one of the most important names in radical, independent publishing today with an impressive list of over five hundred books of translated works as well as publications by world renowned writers and poets that include Nobel laureates and Booker prize winners. Seagull publishes several special series dedicated to a wide range of themes and geographic regions. Seagul...

In this episode of the Radical Publishing Futures series, host Meg Arenberg sits down with Michel Moushabeck of Interlink Publishing based in Northhampton, Massachusetts. Interlink Books is especially known for its award-winning cookbooks, but also publishes a wide range of titles in literary translation, history, politics, and travel, as well as multicultural children's books. In the course...

For the second episode in the Radical Publishing Futures series, host Meg Arenberg speaks with members of the Canada-based publishing collective Between the Lines (BTL). With the tagline "Books without Bosses," BTL has been publishing nonfiction focused on social justice and progressive politics since its founding in 1977. Long-time editorial committee member, Mike Ma, and current design and...

In this episode, host Meg Arenberg chats with Walter Bgoya, towering Tanzanian intellectual, long time progressive publisher, and founder of the country's long-running independent press, Mkuki na Nyota (Spear and Star). Bgoya describes his early years as a publisher amid the radical ferment of Dar es Salaam in the 1970s and the porous boundaries between publishing, activism, and public intellectua...

Writer and photographer Maaza Mengiste joined host Bhakti Shringarpure in the studio to discuss the expanding boundaries of African literature today. While the days of African literary tourism are behind us, there still remain significant challenges to overcome in Western publishing. Recent focus on literature from East Africa illustrates that the region's unique literary output often grapples wit...

Novelist, filmmaker and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga joined host Bhakti Shringarpure from Harare, Zimbabwe. Dangarembga was awarded the 2021 PEN Pinter Prize which honors literary merit as well as fierce political commitment. The conversation explored the shape and state of "literature engagée" or the literature of commitment today and Dangarembga said that she sees no choice but to narrate the rea...