We’re changing things up in 2025. We’ve moved our newsletter over to Substack. So if you are happy to keep on being a subscriber, you don’t need to do anything. (You can unsubscribe if you don’t want to receive the newsletters anymore.)
As from the 1st Feb, we’ve moved to Blue Weaver as our distribution and marketing partner, they use Booksite to manage their distribution.
Welcome to a new year in a world that seems wilder, more hectic and scarier than last year if that is possible. But good things are still possible, and publishing beautiful books by southern African women is one of those good things. We hope you will want to read them.
New titles to look out for
Imprint Africa: Conversations with African Women Publishers is at the printer as we speak, there have been some delays but we’re almost there. We have lots of people clamouring for this title. You can pre-order by clicking on the link above.
These are the publishers who were interviewed for the book: Ellah Wakatama (Caine Prize), Bibi Bakare-Yusuf (Cassava Republic Press), Zukiswa Wanner (Paivapo), Ainehi Edoro (Brittle Paper), Louise Umutoni (Huza Press), Lola Shoneyin (Ake Arts and Book Festival), Colleen Higgs (Modjaji Books), Goretti Kyomuhendo (African Writers’ Trust), and Thabiso Mahlape (Blackbird Books).
We’re bringing out Valerie Tagwira’s second novel, Trapped. She was a Weaver Press author, but since they closed at the end of 2023, we took on Trapped for the South African market. It’s a highly relevant read for South Africans as young people figure out how to survive after university.
Unesu is a doctor, Cashleen trained as a journalist and Delta is qualified as a chemical engineer. Unesu is employed, but his work exposes him to the deficiencies in the system every day as he faces the challenges of life and death. Each of the two young women, good friends, daunted by having their job applications repeatedly rejected, make moral and ethical compromises to find work, or at least an income that will pay their bills. The characters survive in a time of crisis, with courage, determination, friendship and humour.
We are very proud to be publishing Unseen: Listening to visually impaired South Africans by Joanne Bloch will be out towards the end of March.
A new movie tie-in edition of Snake by Tracey Farren is in production. The novel first came out in 2011. The movie was directed by Meg Rickards and produced by Known Associates Entertainment and Boondoggle Films. If you want to watch the movie, it is on Amazon Prime at the moment and then from April will be on EVOD.
We’ve partnered with Joanne Fedler to bring her latest novel, The Whale’s Last Song to South African readers. Joanne will be in South Africa in March to launch her book. Dates: 6th March at Exclusive Books, Cavendish in conversation with Kate Sidley and on the 12th March at Love Books with Gail Schimmel in Joburg. Don’t miss out, Joanne is a phenomenal speaker, inspiring, passionate, and always fascinating to listen to. We will share invitations on Instagram and Facebook.
Jeannie McKeown’s second collection of poetry, Ornithology is in production too and will be out by April. Jeannie has been the International winner of the University of Canberra’s VC’s Poetry Prize for 2023 and 2024.
Here is the poem from which we took the title:
Ornithology
The women in my family
return as birds
when they are done being women.
Grandmothers and great-grandmothers:
bokmakierie, wagtails, hoopoes.
My mother didn’t say
which bird she would be,
although species in numbers
held their parliaments
in her garden.
She did set a forked length
of driftwood into the riverbank,
a perch on which to sit and wait,
before the silent launch
of a dusk hunt,
and on the night after her death,
while I watched the sun set
a spotted eagle owl came,
and watched with me.
Updates on 2024 titles in the news
In the Shadows (the English translation of Innie Shadows, first published in Kaaps) has recently been favourably reviewed by The Washington Independent Review of Books , News24, the Miramachi Review in Canada and Tydskrif vir Lettterkunde reviews. It was also featured on Brittle Paper and the JRB. and Olivia Coetzee, the author was at the Cape Flats Book Festival this past weekend. She has also been invited to the Kingsmead Book Fair in May.1
Saaleha Bhamjee, author of Home Scar was also invited to the Cape Flats Book Festival and I was in conversation with her and Mia Arderne for a session “Hidden Wings, Hidden Hearts: Growing up in South Africa.” We appreciate our authors being included in this wonderful initiative. Thank you Read to Rise and Taryn Lock the organiser.
The 2024 African Small Publishers Catalogue came out in October last year. (We realised too late we should have titled it the 2025 Catalogue). We’ve had lots of great feedback on it. It’s available for purchase on our website as an ebook and a print book. It’s available from ABC and other online bookstores internationally. Apart from the listings of African publishers across the continent, we are also proud of our articles, we feature a writing and publishing success story from Makhanda, which started in 1997 and is still ongoing. We acknowledge the closure of 3 important independent African publishing companies. More needs to be done to make the work of small publishers on the continent viable. There is a discussion in two articles on the pros and cons of self-publishing, one is by Charlene Smith, an award-winning South African journalist who lives in the US now. And there is much more.
Forthcoming titles to watch out for
Sekuru: searching for Silas a memoir by Lesley LysaghtThe Light Remains, a debut novel by Samatha KellerThe Limbo Circus, by Mel Kelly, her second collection of short stories.
In other news
Members of the ICIP meeting in Paris in October 2024