5 CARIBBEAN CANADIAN AUTHORS TO KNOW February 25, 2021 – Posted in: Highlights

Olive Senior is the Toronto-based Jamaican author of 18 works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s literature. Her widely taught, widely translated works have won her many awards, including the Matt Cohen Award, the Musgrave Medal, and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her stories, set in rural and urban Jamaica, are celebrated for their humour and musicality, haunting use of history and folklore, and rich characters, many of them children coming to terms with…

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5 AFRICAN CANADIAN AUTHORS TO KNOW February 20, 2021 – Posted in: Highlights

Kagiso Lesego Molope is a South African writer who lives in Ottawa. Her novels, set in the South Africa of the 1990s and afterwards, bear witness to the legacies of apartheid and are studied in schools across South Africa. Her best-known book, the young adult novel This Book Betrays My Brother, won a Percy FitzPatrick Award and an Ottawa Book Award. and was named to best-of lists by Kirkus Reviews, the Globe and Mail, CBC, and the Chicago Public Library. WHAT TO READ: Awumey is a Togolese-Canadian writer…

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Black History Month Features February 16, 2021 – Posted in: Highlights, Holidays & Observances

To mark Black History Month, we highlight a selection of Mawenzi House titles that play with the anthology form to celebrate the plurality and polyphony of Black culture, Black creativity, and Black lives.

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Black History Month 2020 Highlight: Part 3 February 20, 2020 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

You might recognize The Youth of God by Hassan Ghedi Santur from Canada Reads Longlist! In its telling, this novel reveals the alienated lives of Somali youth in an environment riddled with crime and unemployment, while still in the grip of bitter memories of a home left behind. Hassan emigrated from Somalia to Canada at age thirteen. He has a BA in English Literature and an MFA from York University, and an MA from Columbia…

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Black History Month 2020 Highlight: Part 2 February 11, 2020 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

Nur Abdi’s debut novel, The Somali Camel Boy, tells the story of Ali who is a simple but self-willed camel boy arrested by the Duki clan. He later escapes for Toronto, where he dreams of revenge on his father’s death. Nur grew up in the territory now known as Somaliland. In the 1980s, when a civil war was raging in Somalia, he sought refuge in Canada and became a citizen in 1994. Opposing the repressive…

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Black History Month 2020 Highlight: Part 1 February 3, 2020 – Posted in: Highlights, Readings & Excerpts

Kagiso Lesego Molope just recently won the Ottawa Book Award (English Fiction) for her YA release of This Book Betrays My Brother, which was originally published in South Africa …where it won the Percy Fitzpatrick Prize by the English Academy of Southern Africa! For her latest novel, Such a Lonely, Lovely Road, which is a story about two men coming out in South Africa, she became the inaugural winner of the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award…

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Black History Month: Poetry Highlight February 15, 2019 – Posted in: Highlights

Black History Month is a time to celebrate the important achievements made by African Americans throughout history. Over the years, Black Canadians have contributed immensely to literature, whether it be in the prose or verse form. Here is a look into the great African Canadian writers we have published, and the importance of their verses. Nuff Said by Michelle Muir skillfully blends the language of the contemporary urban environment with her personal take on African-Canadian rhythmic…

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Black History Month: Fiction Highlight 1 February 5, 2019 – Posted in: Highlights