Africa39 selected

       They've been looking for the Africa39, 'a Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club Project':

which aims to select and celebrate 39 of the best African south of the Sahara writers under the age of 40

        [Aside: if you're excluding writers from north of the Sahara, why not call yourself the 'Africa south of the Sahara 39' ? My complaining about the Man Asian Literary Prize calling itself 'Asian' -- when, for its first years, it excluded writers from nations west of Pakistan (i.e. an enormous part of Asia) -- seems to have paid off (writers from most Asian countries are now eligible), so I'll register the same complaint here: you can't (and shouldn't) call/consider yourself continental if you aren't. (I note also that the the writers who suffer most from this exclusion are those writing in Arabic -- as is also still the case with the remaining Asian nations excluded from the Man Asian Literary Prize -- what's that about ?)]
       Anyway, they've now come up with the 39 authors -- though I can't even find a simple list of all of them, or any sort of press release -- the official site has a ridiculous alphabetical index, the official weblog is ... not very helpful, the official Twitter feed a joke. Come on, this is a worthy endeavor -- these authors deserve better !