MF GALAXY

ATTENTION! In December I'll be launching my podcast/vlog MF GALAXY! Fresh out the gate I'll have the first 8 half-hour podcasts. My guests will include (among others): The Walking Dead director Ernest R. Dickerson Comedian Darryl Lenox  Authors A Lee Martinez and Robert J. Sawyer  Mass Effect voice actor and improv genius Mark Meer  Bob the Angry Flower creator Stephen Notley  Stage and MadTV madman Ronald Pederson , and  Screenwriter and Concrete Park creator Tony Puryear! The podcasts will be free, but I'm hoping folks will subscribe for $1 or $2 a month, or better yet $1 a podcast (details to follow). Pl ease share on FB, Twitter, etc. If you want to be alerted when the page is up, leave a note in the comments with your email address.

Strangely enough, it hadn't occurred to me until just yesterday that all of my books (if one takes my War & Mir trilogy as a single work) are in part or in large measure about community activists . In The Coyote Kings , Hamza and Yehat run an intermittent “Coyote Camp” during summers where local (largely newcomer or second-generation Canadians) can play street hockey, launch model rockets, build trebuchets, put on plays, and do other amazing boffo stuff. In my Kindred-winning and PKD-runner up political satire Shrinking the Heroes ( originally published as From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain), the L*A*B (League of Angry Blackmen) not only supply security for their neighbourhood of Langston-Douglass, they run programmes such as “Free Breakfast for Shorties,” “Africa Medallions for Homies,” and “Free Fades, Flat-Tops, and Afro-Picks for Soul Brothers.” In The Alchemists ofKush , Brother Moon and company run a youth organisation called the Alchemist...

Canada's second largest university, the University of Alberta, has nominated me as the 2014-15 Writer in Residence. Valued at $50,000, the cash equivalent to the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the res idency entitles me to write my own work (which includes finishing my War & Mir trilogy and creating several screenplays) and to help writers (from novices to professionals) of the greater Edmonton community to advance their writing. To the best of my knowledge, I am the first Kenyan-Canadian to be made Writer in Residence at any university or college in the world, and one of the very few African-Canadians to become a Writer in Residence at any Canadian university. I will be hosting four literary salons called AUTHORPALOOZAS, featuring at least sixteen Alberta writers from various disciplines (novels, poetry, song lyrics, comics, video games, plays, journalism, blogs, and more), who will come on stage to read from their work and/or be interviewed by me. I will also be vlogging, post...

1. Africa is not a country. 2. Africa is 55 countries and 1 billion people. But if Africa *were* one country, the GDP per capita would be higher than that for India or China. See Vijay Mahajan's Africa Rising . 3. This poster grossly misrepresents the experiences of 1 billion people in 55 countries. See the world's leading multi-disciplinary, statistical survey of Safety & Rule of Law, Participation & Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity, and Human Development of Africa's 55 countries as prepared annually by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation . 4. This poster continues the standard White liberal positioning of a mythic, monolithic "Africa" as the ultimate contrast for the White techno-civilisation: as a sprawl of unrelenting misery and deprivation, and therefore a place to focus White liberal pity (which is to say, a racist illusion of superiority masquerading as compassion), rather than addressing realities of, say, water desalination , business...

Join me for the launch of my new novel, War & Mir, Volume I: Ascension, a revisionist space opera like The Phantom Menace on meth. Corporations dominate the third world, second world, and first world.How long will it be until they control the entire solar system? WHERE: Happy Harbour Comics, 107th Street + 104th Avenue across from MacEwan U  downtown. WHEN: July 18 (Wednesday), 7:30 - 8:30 PM OCCUPY THE SOLAR SYSTEM!

Listen to/stream the February 29, 2012 edition of AFRICENTRIC RADIO for: Minister Faust’s exclusive conversation with Alternative Radio founder David Barsamian in advance of his speech for the Edmonton Public Library’s Freedom to Read Week, a free event this Saturday night at the Stanley Milner Branch. Ralph Nader on medicare and the global threat of energy inefficiency A commentary by journalist Mumia Abu Jamal on one of the most significant revolutionary thinkers of the 20th Century, the Martiniquan psychiatrist and national liberation insurgent, Frantz Fanon!

By Irfah Aden   I would not call myself a sports enthusiast. And lord knows I’ve never broken a sweat intentionally. But I feel compelled to share this story. I’d like to introduce you to the Somali National Women’s Basketball Team. While this image may appear to depict a run-of-the-mill basketball team, the Somali National Women’s Basketball Team is anything but ordinary. They recently competed at the Arab Games, where they won two thrilling matches against Kuwait and the host nation, Qatar. This was no small feat, and while they did not win any other matches, they will return to Somalia as national heroes. Somalis all over the globe have been inspired by the team’s perseverance and courage against challenges that would make the most confident daredevil faint-hearted.  In fact, these women have sparked a pride in our people and a renewed hope in the possibility of a peaceful and prosperous Somalia.