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

Interview with Now Novel debut novelist Christine Bhasin

Christine Bhasin wanted to write for a long time, but life and children took over. She took the plunge into writing when she hit 60. She joined Now Novel where she has been able to receive feedback on her chapters as she wrote. Christine Bhasin Now 65, she has been steadily at...

April 18th, 2024

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Impact of introductions, prologues, prefaces and forewords

‘I was told that novels shouldn’t have prologues,’ a writer said to me recently. We had been discussing her novel, and I was suggesting that she could add a prologue to it to strengthen as aspect of the story. She said that she was under the impression that a prologue would slow or delay the...

April 15th, 2024

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Writers sound off on vanity publishing

Recently we asked this question on Now Novel’s social media platforms: Some say vanity presses exploit writers’ dreams by charging excessive fees. Others argue they provide an alternative path in a tough industry. What’s your take?There were a lot of responses to this hot button topic. Vanity pr...

April 8th, 2024

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The art of writing flat characters

While the main aim in telling a story might be to include round, complex characters in your story, it’s also equally important to include flat characters. In fact, some novels even contain a main flat character. An example of this is Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot’s detective mysteries. Poiro...

March 25th, 2024

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Exploring the structure of Freytag's Pyramid

Storytelling is at the heart of our human interactions. We tell stories when we talk to each other, explaining what has happened in our lives. We also pay money to consume stories in the form of movies, theatre, books and so on. So many stories use the Freytag’s Pyramid (or Triangle) method, and...

March 18th, 2024

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Decoding the Hero's Journey

Whether you're a fan of mythology or simply interested in the art of storytelling, let's delve into the world of the Hero's Journey. What is the Hero's Journey or the monomyth? The Hero’s Journey is a widely recognised pattern of storytelling and is essentially a circular storytelling ...

January 15th, 2024

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