Arja Salafranca

Contributor

Arja Salafranca is a South African writer and content creator for Now Novel. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Wits University (2012) and currently lives in Johannesburg.

Biography:

Her first poetry collection, A life stripped of illusions, received the 1994 Sanlam Award for poetry, while a short story, ‘Couple on the Beach’ received a Sanlam Award in 1999. Her second collection of poetry, The fire in which we burn, was published by Dye Hard Press in 2000. She received the 2009 Dalro Award for poetry. Her third poetry collection, Beyond touch, was a co-winner of the 2016 Sala Awards. Her debut collection of short stories, The Thin Line, was published by Modjaji Books in 2010. It was long-listed for the Wole Soyinka Award in 2012.

She has edited three anthologies of prose most recently Fool’s Gold (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Awards.

She edited the Life supplement in the Johannesburg-based The Sunday Independent from 2003 to 2016.

Her next publication is a collection of creative non-fiction to be published in 2024, consisting of memoir and travel stories.

Find out more:

Recent posts

The Rise of Romantasy: Love in Enchanted Worlds

It is not many authors that walk into a New York City bookstore to be greeted by screaming fans. But that’s exactly what happened with romantasy author Sarah J Maas in February 2024. Just before midnight she surprised fans waiting for the imminent publication of latest novel, House of Flame and ...

October 7th, 2024

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Writing well-developed female characters

Does your story containing female characters pass the Bechdel test? Never heard of it? Simply put the Bechdel test is a way of evaluating whether or not a film or any other work of fiction portrays women in a way that is sexist or characterized by gender stereotyping. To...

August 26th, 2024

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The rise of eco-fiction: a literary response to environmental crisis

The world is getting hotter and fiction writers’ responses to environmental and climate change are heating up too. While not a new genre, its rise can be dated to the 1960s and 1970s, more and more novels and non-fiction works now deal with the impact of this climate crisis. Eco-fiction is on th...

July 29th, 2024

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Writing in the voice of a child

A friend recently told me of her difficulty in writing her memoir from a child’s point of view. She’s finding it really difficult to do so. That’s understandable in a memoir, I feel, as you are looking back with an adult’s eyes but trying to process the world through a child’s. But it’s not impo...

June 24th, 2024

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Interiority in fiction: the glue between inner and outer worlds

Fiction provides a window into the lives, thoughts, and emotions of characters. One of the most powerful tools a writer has in their arsenal to achieve this is the use of interiority. Interiority, or the depiction of a character's inner thoughts and feelings, allows readers to step inside the mi...

June 3rd, 2024

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Delving into fourth person point of view

‘Whenever we saw Mrs. Lisbon we looked in vain for some sign of the beauty that must have once been hers. But the plump arms, the brutally cut steel-wool hair, and the librarian’s glasses foiled us every time.’ These lines are from the opening chapter of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey E...

May 27th, 2024

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