Context: Africa from PEN International

Before diving into seven months worth of Frankfurt follow-up (should finish just in time to start making appointments) and probably a dozen or more posts about the fair and the business of publishing international lit, I thought I’d check out the PEN International Newsletter, which turned out to have a lot of great stuff in it.

The most interesting thing in the newsletter was the link to the new issue of PEN International’s magazine.

This issue is Context: Africa (warning—pdf format) and

marks the inauguration of the magazine’s regional-focus series, beginning this month with a look at contemporary literature in Africa, followed in the coming seasons by Middle East, Latin America and Asia/Pacific installments.

This issue is loaded with content—over 140 pages of excerpts, poems, interviews, all with African authors. And since African writing is relatively difficult to find out about, this should be a very useful resource.