The Book Lounge and the Fugard Theatre invite you to Open Book Cape Town
9 – 13 September 2015
April is always an exciting month on the calendar. The 23rd of April is World Book Day and an opportunity to celebrate writing, reading and everything in between. It’s also time for a few more names of authors who will be touching down in Cape Town in September to take part in Open Book.
Marc Boutavant is an acclaimed children’s book author and illustrator who is joining us thanks to the French Institute. His work brims with colour and is a real treat for readers young and old.
Christopher Hope joined us at the first edition of Open Book in 2010. We are delighted that he is returning in 2015, along with a brand new novel, Jimfish.
Åsne Seierstad, best known for her accounts of everyday life in conflict zones (including The Bookseller of Kabul) has confirmed her attendance. Her latest book, One of Us, is an unflinching account of the mass killing on Utoya Island in Norway and will be in book shops in the near future.
R.A.Villanueva is joining us thanks to the US Consulate. His poetry collection, Reliquaria, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He is also the winner of the inaugural Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry.
Christopher Hope, Åsne Seierstad and Ron Villanueva
They will be joining Karen Joy Fowler, Patrick Gale, Masha Gessen, Saskia Goldschmidt, Andrey Kurkov, Helen Macdonald, Neel Mukherjee, Okey Ndibe, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Chris Riddell and Laura van den Berg
Together with FunDza, we are kicking off the READ CONNECT SHARE campaign on World Book Day. Through the very generous donation of a beautiful book bench, we have a place to home 40+ books which will be available free to any member of the public. The idea though is that once you’ve finished reading, you share the book with someone else. We’ll be focusing on the Harmony High series, but if anyone else would like to donate a book towards the campaign, please do.
And please also visit the READ CONNECT SHARE facebook page to see how books are moving.
We’ll be sending out further information in the near future so keep an eye on your inbox.
In other news, the first session of the Open Book Mentoring Programme was absolutely great! For the first time, we produced a booklet that included some of the pieces participants worked on. Called Think Write, we hope this is the first of many editions. Should you be interested in seeing the final product, both the Book Lounge and Central Library have copies (please note that we don’t have copies available for sale).
If you would like further details about the festival or events through the year, please contact Frankie (frankie@openbookfestival.co.za).
Open Book is organised in partnership with The Fugard Theatre, The District 6 Museum, The Townhouse Hotel, Equal Education, The Bookery, The Dutch Foundation for Literature, The French Institute, The US Consulate, Central Library, PEN SA, The Goethe Institute, UCT Creative Writing Department and sponsored by Leopards Leap, Pan Macmillan, NB Publishers, Jonathan Ball and Penguin Random House.