Author: Catalyst Press | CatalystPress

Catalyst is Putting Stories on the Map with Flare

Joining Catalyst, our flagship African-centered publishing company, Story Press Africa, our collaborative graphic novel imprint, and Powers Squared, our science-and-nature-based imprint, we’re pleased to announce our newest imprints, Flare Books and Flare Kids.

Flare continues the ethos of Catalyst in sparking conversation through books from around the world— this time with a place-based emphasis. From rural New England to suburban Texas to coastal Sweden, each of these books place readers in locations around the world, along with the sights, sounds, and characters populating them.

From Catalyst Press founder, Jessica Powers: “I think Catalyst has always been about publishing unheard voices, and I see Flare Books as continuing to offer opportunities for excellent writers around the world. We’ve done that by publishing African writers who have been unknown in North America, and now we’re continuing to do that with writers from other places.

“I also definitely see that I have a strong affinity to books that are strongly located in geographic and cultural settings that are specific and germane to the book’s plots and characters—where setting is almost a character in and of itself. This is certainly true of the Africa-based books, and I think is equally true of most of the books Flare is publishing in its first season. Ashawnta Jackson, who has worked for Catalyst for seven years now, pointed out once that I am clearly drawn to historical fiction, as we’ve unintentionally published a lot of it. I think that, again, has to do with my interest in exploring place. I probably should have been a geographer.”

In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing sneak peeks of our forthcoming Flare releases. Stay tuned!

Remembering Niki Daly

It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of the passing of beloved children’s author and illustrator, Niki Daly. We were honored to not just publish his work, but to call him a friend. His spirit and love practically burst from the pages of his books. The warmth and kindness in his words so perfectly echoed those in his heart.

Throughout his long career, Niki was the author/illustrator of over forty books for children. His critically-acclaimed books earned him a US Parent’s Choice Award, a Children’s Africana Book Award, a Children’s Literature Choice Award and the Parents’ Choice Silver Award, among many others. Most recently, he was awarded a Skipping Stones award for his book, Fly High, Lolo and a Charlotte Zolotow Award for his final book, On My Papa’s Shoulders, a beautiful ode to fathers and sons.

Niki had that ineluctable ability to write and illustrate irresistible children’s stories. And it’s no wonder, because he loved kids. But more than that, he respected them. He respected their voices, their thoughts, their emotions, never speaking down to them, but immersing himself in their world, and shining it back to them in his work. That is part of him that will live on— years from now, eras from now—in the smiles and excitement of a new generation turning the pages of his books.

All of us here at Catalyst Press send our deepest condolences to his wife, Jude, his sons Joe and Leo, his granddaughter Emily, and his daughter-in-law Magriet.

#ReadingAfrica 2023: The Wrap-up

This year’s #ReadingAfrica Week has sort of turned into #ReadingAfrica Month. That’s due to a few factors. One, we’re a small team and each year gets bigger and bigger, and we sometime can’t keep up. Two, life gets in the way, and things you’d hoped would be done by one date, gets shifted to another. Catalyst Press might be a brand, but the behind-the-scenes is a group of people, and we get sick, our kids get sick, or our work load suddenly increases. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s to extend grace and kindness to everyone because you truly never know what’s going on in the background. And three, one of our events was rudely interrupted by trolls who we guess wanted to send the week out with a bang (a joke that any of you who were at the panel on translation last Friday will no doubt understand).

But because of those delays, we just may have a few other surprises to share with you this month. Stay tuned!

Of our planned and off-without-a-hitch, programming, we— if we may be so bold— knocked it out of the park. Yes, we’re a tiny team, but we’re a mighty one, and we couldn’t be prouder with how this year’s event turned out. Keep reading for a run-down of #ReadingAfrica Week 2023

#ReadingAfrica 2023: Go Westward

Today we focus on West Africa. We begin with a short statement from Aba Amissah Asibon, a Ghanaian writer and an SSDA Inkubator Fellow whose work will be appearing in our forthcoming release, Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa.

Storytelling is a constant reminder that borders are merely arbitrary constructs meant to perpetuate separation and otherness. At the core of it all, there is a shared human experience that drives narratives around the world. It is always such a thrill to know that no matter where a reader is from, they can pick up my writing and see a piece of themselves in it. As a writer, my ultimate goal is to have the reader identify with my characters’ triumphs and shortcomings regardless of tribe, race or nationality. —Aba Amissah Asibon

Working with Short Story Day Africa on two anthologies has been a wonderful opportunity for us to both bring more African voices to more readers, but as readers ourselves, to explore the continent through its emerging writers.

For further reading:
“The four generations: Nigerian literature, the Booker Prize and beyond” The Booker Prize has a great long read by Gazelle Mba on Nigeria’s literary past, present, and future: “Nigerian literature is in dialogue with itself, with its own fraught past, in a concerted effort to understand the nation from which it originates.  Nigeria is a nation of deep, seemingly irresolvable contradictions; and its writers appear to be enamoured of the same impossible task: write to discover the truth of who we are as a nation.”

Though this publication focuses on more than West African writing, Open Country Magazine was founded by Nigerian journalist Otosirieze Obi-Young and “It takes its name from the new generation of writers, especially in Nigeria, who are pushing back against censorship and leveraging social media and a newfound confidence to speak up and make the world they want to see.

The African Poetry Digital Portal, a a project of the African Poetry Book Fund, is a “gateway, providing access to and details of digital and print book manuscripts, newspapers and periodicals, newsletters, audio recordings, video recordings, websites, and related collections of African poetry written by Africans from antiquity to the present.” Check out their selections of West African poets.

The Imagine Africa Series is a collection “which aims to celebrate the diverse voices and imaginations of the continent of Africa and its diaspora,” and features poems, essays, fiction, conversations, and visual art. There are several volumes of the collection, but we may be partial to volume three, which was edited by Bhakti Shringarpure, one of the panelists on African Languages, Global Audiences: Publishers and Writers on the Art of Translation, one of our three #ReadingAfrica Week panels.

#ReadingAfrica 2023: Centering the Reading

Today is all about Central Africa! We begin with a lovely thought from Sola Njoku. Sola, a Nigerian writer, is one of the contributors to our forthcoming release, Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa.

They say Africa’s internal borders are the straightest you will find on a continental map. Apportioned in a beeline manner in a land grab by those whose interest in the dark continent did not extend to its people. A Western European feast in Berlin that bisected families, clans and villages and rendered them strangers to one other. The aim to distort, estrange and control. Why? Even now, freed, we let these structures stand in our geography and in our imagination – a testament to how we have been turned against the ties that bind our hearts together to lean on the crutches that restrain our bodies and minds, for we must ideate one way or the other.

But when, awoken, I write and you read, and you write and I read, we gain enlightenment of our commonality and realise that we are all descendants of one undulating civilisation. Thus our shackles of oppression may fall away one mind at a time. So, my compatriot, write Africa, and read it even more. Let our imagination and hearts wander free to places that are truly ours, unrestricted by artificial structures, for have not our gatekeepers kept us apart for long enough? —Sola Njoku

Read Palestine Week

It’s rare that two weeks centered on powerful writing from outside of the US happen at the same time. But this is one of those times. From November 29 – December 5, Publishers for Palestine hosts #ReadPalestine Week, encouraging “people around the world to read fiction and poetry by Palestinian and Palestinian diaspora authors, as well as nonfiction about Palestinian history, politics, arts, culture, and life, as well as books about organizing, resistance, and solidarity for a Free Palestine.”

Though we don’t specifically publish Palestinian authors (at least not yet), as a publisher who works with writers who have often been displaced, had history and war constantly shifting the ground beneath them, we understand the motivation. These writers, despite it all, still reach for words, still need to tell their stories. We wanted to do what we could to both participate and acknowledge the work of the #ReadPalestine Week organizers.

In 2012, Catalyst founder and author, Jessica Powers compiled and edited an anthology called That Mad Game: Growing Up in A Warzone. First published through Cinco Puntos Press and now available through Lee & Low Books, the book features seventeen essays from writers across the world, each examining the impact of war on children.

#ReadingAfrica 2023: Looking East

As we mentioned in our post yesterday, we’ve divided each day of this week into regions. Today, we’ll be looking at east Africa. We’ll start this post with a short response on the question of borders from author Caroline Kurtz. We’re proud to publish two of Caroline’s memoirs— A Road Called Down on Both Sides and Today is Tomorrow— the former a recounting of her childhood in rural Ethiopia as the daughter of American missionaries, and the latter revisiting the era that she and her late husband began working with civil war refugees in South Sudan and Kenya. Both are thoughtful examinations of a life straddling cultures, and of the inherent complexities that exist when intentions don’t always match realities.

Borders delineate power, and territorial wars have marked Ethiopia’s history. Italians tried twice to colonize , sandwiched as the country was between Italian Eritrea and Italian Somalia. After fascist dictator Mussolini invaded, he erased the borders between the three countries, and declared a new country: Italian East Africa.

When the war ended, Allied powers broke the three countries up again and federated Eritrea and Ethiopia. But that set in motion a vicious liberation struggle. Eventually, a new Ethiopian constitution gave each state the power of self-determination, up to and including secession. Eritrea promptly seceded. But the two countries disputed a rocky triangle on their border and went to war with each other again.

Around that same time, in what now looks like the wind that created a whirlwind, Ethiopia was internally re-districted along ethnic lines. This has created border disputes throughout the country and has pitted Ethiopians against each other. Even the borders of Addis Ababa are now being disputed in riots by farmers and ethnic radicals in the neighboring state.

Invasions and disputed borders have led to death and war throughout Ethiopia’s history. And the end of her story is not yet written. —Caroline Kurtz, author of Today is Tomorrow and A Road Called Down on Both Sides

#ReadingAfrica 2023: Finding Your Place on the Map

Welcome to another #ReadingAfrica Week! Each year, we try to highlight genres because one of the big, huge, flashing-in-neon reasons we do this event is to point out that African literature isn’t a genre. Rather, it’s a huge, diverse world of writing from a huge, diverse continent of voices. But this year, we decided to do something a little different. This year, instead of dividing our daily focus by genre, we decided to do it by region. We’d orient our literary compass and explore the continent book by book.

Sounds easy, right?

Here’s the thing: as we began to divide this massive area into digestible pieces, it felt…. weird? Unethical? Confusing? Where exactly, does one country end and another begin? Wars are being fought over this. Families are being separated over this. Lives are being lost over this. Borders feel cruel, feel arbitrary. But on the other hand, for people screaming to be seen, to be recognized, borders are everything. They are lines—no matter how arbitrary—on a map that say home, that say you belong, that say you are safe here. And in a place as large, as contested, and as vast as Africa, we felt that we needed to acknowledge that these borders have meaning.

#ReadingAfrica Week 2023

Welcome to our favorite time of the year— #ReadingAfrica Week!

Each year, during the first full week of December, we celebrate the richness and diversity of African literature all across social media, all week long.

We started #ReadingAfrica Week in 2017, and each year we ask book-lovers of all kinds to use the hashtags #ReadingAfrica or #ReadingAfricaWeek across social media on posts that spotlight African literature.

We started this campaign to bring attention to writers who are doing diverse and genre-spanning work from every corner of the African continent. And because we’re an indie publisher, we really wanted to spotlight all of the great things our colleagues in the indie publishing world are doing to bring these voices to more readers.

Our first year was small: we reached out to just a few presses and asked them to use the hashtag on their social media posts to spotlight new books, old favorites, upcoming releases, and gems from their catalogs to show people the diversity of African literature. From that first campaign, #ReadingAfrica has only grown in scope and reach. We’ve included events, and we’ve had participants from four continents, spanning fields and organizations such as libraries, schools, publishers, writers and more. The past two years have also marked our including a companion #ReadingAfrica playlist, one curated by a member of acclaimed Afro-funk band, Sinkane, and another by a DJ/artist.

Each year, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the support of readers and publishers from around the globe, each eager to celebrate African literature. Africa is a place with incalculable stories to tell, and our goal each year is to prioritize African voices, spark conversation, and to resist the flattening of a place with limitless possibilities.

And this year, we want to help you keep #ReadingAfrica, this week, and for many weeks to come. When you purchase our books through our IndiePubs page, not only will you be supporting us with your purchase, but all this month you can save 25% off of your purchase when you use the code READINGAFRICA at checkout. This is our way of saying thank you for another great year of reading and community.

Keep up with us all week long as we spotlight the great writing coming from Africa and the diaspora, and be sure to join us for one of our three live events. All are free, but registration is required. Keep reading to learn more!