Congratulations!

… to the winners of the ArtVenture prizes, awarded last night in London: the Freedom to Create Prize was awarded to Zimbabwean playwright Cont Mhlanga, a fierce critic of the Mugabe regime (who was unable to leave Zimbabwe to attend the ceremony), while the prize for an Imprisoned Activist went to Zargana, a Burmese comedian and activist who was arrested on the evening of 4 June 2008 after leading a private relief effort to deliver aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis which struck on 2 May 2008. English PEN reports that on 21 November 2008 he was handed a harsh 45-year sentence in response to h

is outspoken criticism of the government's slow response to the cyclone, and his opposition activities.

… to Laila Lalami, picked as one of the Top 10 litblogs at blogs.com

… to Queen Rania of Jordan, who won YouTube's first ever Visionary Award, for her videostream dedicated to combatting damaging stereotypes and misperceptions of Arabs and the Middle East (Global Voices collects tributes from the blogosphere here)



… to Lawrence Venuti, who Words Without Borders report is the winner of this year's Robert Fagles Translation Prize

New: Toot and Farafina 15

Two items of excitement today: a new Arabic blogging aggregator, Toot, with a focus on

intelligent, passionate, interesting, funny, knowledgeable and courageous people… using the web to make their voices heard.

They're featuring 181 blogs so far, in both Arabic and English, and readers can vote blogs on the site up and down to reflect "what's tooting." Bloggers are invited to submit their blogs for consideration.

Blogger Laila Lalami, perhaps one of the most-read litbloggers and/or Arab bloggers, flags up her guest-edited issue of Nigerian literary magazine Farafina, with a focus on "Remapping Africanness," as Moroccoan writer Anouar Majid titles his essay, to include North Africa. The issue includes an excerpt from Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men, a wonderful serial poem about the Nile by Coptic poet Matthew Shenoda, a report on Darfur by Fady Joudah (Mahmoud Darwish's translator) and an essay on Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih.

Farafina started as an online magazine in 2004, but since October 2005 has had a print issue as well. You can buy a single issue or subscription from the Kachifo webstore, which has a great selection of African books as well.