In Catalyst news, Bridget Krone’s Small Mercies was just named an Outstanding International Book by the U.S. Board of Books for Young People (USBBY)! This is the second time a Catalyst Press book has won this prize, starting with Futhi Ntshingila’s We Kiss Them with Rain. And a new translation from Ivanka Hahnenberger, the translator for our upcoming graphic novel Madame Livingstone, was just awarded the prestigious Batchelder Award! The Batchelder Award celebrates outstanding children’s books from outside of the United States that have been translated into English. The winning book, Catherine’s War (HarperCollins), was originally published in France in 2017 and tells the story of a Jewish girl named Catherine who is forced to change her identity during World War II. Madame Livingstone, our newest graphic novel about an unlikely friendship in the Congo during World War I, isavailable from Catalyst Press in June. Congratulations to Bridget and Ivanka!
In celebrity book news, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade wrote a children’s book, Shady Baby, inspired by their daughter and scheduled for release in May. Also in May, Big Short author Michael Lewis is releasing a new book, this time about the group that anticipated the global pandemic. Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard is starting a book club, and so is Jeffrey Sachs. Maria Shriver is starting up an imprint at Penguin called The Open Field. Quentin Tarantino signed a two-book deal with Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, the first of which will be the director’s first work of fiction, based on his film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Speaking of the film, its co-star Margaret Qualley will be starring alongside Sigourney Weaver for the movie treatment of the breakout 2014 memoirMy Salinger Year, out March 5th.
In Catalyst news, CrimeReads included Sifiso Mzobe’s North American debut, Young Blood, as one of their most anticipated crime books of 2021! Young Blood will be available in April. BookClubz also selected Helen Brain’s The Thousand Steps, the first book in her dystopian Fiery Spiral trilogy, as their Young Adult pick for January! The second book in the series, The Rising Tide, is out later this year. And we’ll soon be partnering with BookClubz to coordinate a Catalyst Press book club featuring contemporary and classic African literature – so stay tuned!
The writing world lost Eric Jerome Dickey this week, who died at 59 after a several year battle with cancer. Dickey wrote almost 30 novels on topics of Black life and love and sold more than 7 million copies. In South Africa, beloved cookbook author and food critic Dorah Sithole died at the age of 67, just months after the release of her newest book, 40 Years of Iconic Food, which follows her journey from a child in a South Africa township learning to love food to traveling the world as a leader in African cuisine. Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of January 3”
A big thanks to all of the readers, writers, booksellers, and more who participated in our fourth annual #ReadingAfrica week! There’s a lot of really cool content to catch up on: WorldKidLit provided some great African lit resources, Bookshop.org featured Catalyst on their homepage, and Powell’s Books jumped on board with a reading list! And in case you couldn’t tune into our two #ReadingAfrica week events, here’s the recordings of our Kickoff event and our African crime novel panel. We can’t wait to see you next year!
Happy #ReadingAfrica week, everyone! We’re so excited to celebrate with you this week – but if you’re anything like us, you’re #ReadingAfrica all year long! That’s especially true here in South Africa, so here’s a few of my favorite South African book events, bookstores, and literary organizations who, like Catalyst Press, are always finding new ways to share African authors and their stories.
This list definitely is not exhaustive. I’ve been in Cape Town almost two years, and I’m still discovering new literary treasures every single day. So for everyone involved in the book world here in SA, thank you for all you do to bring African stories to readers country—and world—wide. This #ReadingAfrica week, we’re celebrating YOU! Continue reading “Celebrating South Africa’s Literary Treasures”
First up, some big news in the Catalyst world this week: Kirkus Reviews named Bridget Krone’s Small Mercies as one of the best middle grade books of 2020, and Booker shortlisted This Mournable Body author Tsitsi Dangarembga listed two upcoming Catalyst titles, Sifiso Mzobe’s Young Blood and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s TheTheory of Flight, on her top 10 favorite books! Congratulations to our amazing authors – you are the reason we love what we do! [Ed note: We’re having a sale on all of our books all month long! You can pick up any of our books for 20% off this month, and find out exactly why we love these authors so very much!]
Our dear friend Izak DeVries interviewed the Catalyst team for LitNet this week, where we talked about South African and American publishing, exciting things coming up on our list, and our fourth #ReadingAfrica week, which starts this Sunday and goes until December 12! Along with our annual social media campaign, where we encourage readers, authors, and book-lovers of all kinds to post about what African authors they’re reading, we’re also hosting two virtual #ReadingAfrica events for the first time ever. This Sunday, December 6 at 12:00 EST and 19:00 South Africa time, join us for our kick-off event co-hosted with LitNet and featuring a number of authors and publishers from around the world, and on Wednesday, December 9 at 12:00 EST and 19:00 South Africa time, crime columnist Michael Sears will be moderating an African crime novel panel. Find out more and register here for both events. We hope to see you there! Continue reading “This Week in Literary News, Week of November 29”
At the time of writing, it’s day four of the U.S. election and if you’re anything like me, you’re on the hunt for some decidedly not political content to help ease the bone-crushing anxiety. So, here’s some literary escapism for you! (Haters out there sayin’ that books won’t save the world, but Kristen Radtke is here to prove them wrong.) Sit back, switch off CNN, and tune into this week’s best virtual book events.
Speaking of virtual, here what the directors of five global book festivals have to say about pivoting in the age of Zoom. More news from the publishing world: Michelle Obama’sBecoming editor Molly Stern is starting up a new publishing firm called Zando. Bookshop, the rising-star online retail platform for indie booksellers, launched this week in the UK, and Jonny Diamond is pissed that they didn’t spell it Bookshoppe. Dr. Camilla Pang is the first author of color – and youngest author ever – to win the Royal Society science book prize, for her “manual for humans” combining her research on human genetics with her personal experience as an individual on the autism spectrum. The 2020 World Fantasy Award winners were also announced this week.
Wednesday was International Translation Day, the perfect excuse to celebrate Catalyst Press’ amazing translators: Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds (translator of The Farm and The Wall by Max Annas), Elsa Silke (translator of Sacrificed by Chanette Paul), Martin Steyn (author and translator of Dark Traces), and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator of our upcoming graphic novel Madame Livingstone). Thank you for your commitment to bringing new voices to global readers!
The biggest celebrity book news of the week: former U.S. President Barack Obama has penned a memoir! The memoir will be published in two volumes, the first of which will be released after the elections this November and covers the President’s early political career up through the 2011 death of Osama Bin Laden. It’s going to be huge for the industry (and the reader – buckle up, folks, the first volume is 768 pages long). The Bodega Boys wrote a book, Lady Gaga is releasing a collection of short personal stories by young people, and JK Rowling is in trouble again. John Boehner has an… interesting? sensual?… new book cover, and Lil Nas X wrote the “best kids’ book of all time.” A Downton Abbey cookbook is coming out in October. Continue reading “This Week in Literary News”
In Catalyst news, Africa Access Review reviewed two Catalyst titles last week: Here Comes Lolo by Niki Daly, and Small Mercies by Bridget Krone. Give them a read! We also love seeing our Catalyst authors producing new work. On New Frame, Unmaking Grace author Barbara Boswell chats about being a black woman novelist, the joy of writing, and her new book, And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism. If you haven’t read Unmaking Grace yet, you can buy it here!
Some of literature’s leading ladies rocked the headlines this week! This year’s JCB Prize longlist was majority female (and remarkably diverse), with women taking six of ten titles. Huge congratulations to Zambian author and ReadSA nonprofit founder Zukiswa Wanner for being one of three people awarded the Goethe Medal this week, for her commitment to international cultural exchange. Meet the woman behind that Normal People adaptation we’re all obsessed with, and the amazing Baltimore teacher who publishes student novels written by her Black high school freshman students. In the UK, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, and more joined in on the Extinction Rebellion protests this week, speaking out against the right-wing think-tanks pushing climate change denial.
In the U.S., the race to acquire Big 5 house Simon & Schuster is ramping up, with Bertelsmann reportedly joining the fight. Bertelsmann is the owner of Penguin Random House, already the largest publishing house in the world created by a merger of Penguin and Random House back in 2013. HarperCollins is also interested in the acquisition.
I’m always impressed, and somewhat suspicious, when someone tells me they finished the entirety of Karl Ove Knausgaard‘s The Struggle (I certainly have not). Here’s an oddly convincing piece from Jade Wootton at Electric Literature comparing the novelist to everyone’s favorite love-to-hate social media mogul Kim Kardashian.
In celebrity news, Dev Patel stars in a new David Copperfield film, Channing Tatum spent lockdown writing a children’s book (and posted the most Channing Tatum announcement ever about it), and Trump books won’t stop selling – so publishers won’t stop pushing them. The world lost actor Chadwick Boseman last week to a several-year fight with colon cancer. After his celebrated role as T’Challa, King of Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther, Boseman became a hero in his own right, teaching Black children to celebrate their blackness and calling for more Black heroes in mainstream film and literature, a mission we couldn’t agree with more.
South African rugby captain Siya Kolisi is making headlines again, but this time in the book world: his wife Rachel spoke out on Instagram against a reprint of an unauthorized biography on Siya, released by South African publisher Jonathan Ball last year. Now, Jonathan Ball is saying it has no intentions of taking the reprint off the shelves.
Young Blood by Sifiso Mzobe
It’s National Book Week next week here in South Africa, and there are a number of exciting virtual events – follow their Facebook page to stay tuned! This year’s virtual ComicCon Africa is also coming up, and illustrator Jenny Frison is making waves with her Wonder Woman official event posters. Catalyst founder Jessica and I attended last year’s South African Book Fair here in Johannesburg (where I was lucky enough to meet one of our brilliant new authors, Sifiso Mzobe, whose award-winning novel Young Blood will be making its North American debut with us next April!). Check out what the fair is doing this year to take advantage of the virtual space, including collaborations with book fairs in Kenya and Nigeria. And while you’re reading up on the pan-African book world, check out this piece on Africa’s thriving literary magazine industry.
And finally, coming in first for the weirdest news to grace my feed this week: have you heard of this inn in Tokyo that will simulate editorial deadlines for you so you can finally finish that novel you’ve been putting off?
First things first: exciting news for our Catalyst readers! Every Friday of August, we’ll be hosting a sale on our website featuring titles of a certain theme. Today’s sale – 40% off both the physical and e-books of all of our Children’s and YA titleswhen you use the code SUMMERFRIDAYS at checkout! Tune in every Friday to find out the theme of next week’s sale. Next Friday (drum roll please!), our literary ladies take the stage with a sale on all female-authored Catalyst titles!
“It” is official! Stephen King has a new novelcoming out next March. Matthew McConaughey is adding “author” to his résumé, and Lebron James is getting in the (writing) game with a new children’s book. Team Edward? You’re going to love this: Stephanie Meyer, the YA goddess who gave us Twilight, just gave us one more. Midnight Sun hit shelves this week and the series’ cult following is going berserk. Ryan Reynolds is making a movie based an essay in the popular New Yorker column, “Shouts & Murmurs,” and Dan Sheehan’s announcement of it makes the news even better.
A big thanks to all of the readers, writers, booksellers, and more who participated in our fourth annual 
First up, some big news in the Catalyst world this week: 
First things first: exciting news for our Catalyst readers! Every Friday of August, we’ll be hosting a sale on our website featuring titles of a certain theme. Today’s sale –