Category: Events | CatalystPress

March Events with Bridget Pitt

March will be a busy month for Eye Brother Horn author, Bridget Pitt. Not only will she be basking in the glow of her great reviews (the newest from World Literature Today calls it a “heartwarming—and wrenching—tale”), but she’ll be having two in-person event in South Africa.

Join her at the Book Lounge in Cape Town on March 16 at 6pm. She’ll be in conversation with literary critic, David Atwell. Visit the Book Lounge’s website to RSVP.

And on March 29, she heads to Johannesburg for a conversation with Pippa Smith, owner of The Book Revue. The event begins at 6:30pm and will be held at Glenshiel Mansion. Tickets are R150 all all profits will be donated to Friends of the Wild. Email pippa [at] thebookrevue.co.za to RSVP.

Eye Brother Horn, a sweeping tale of colonialism, identity, kinship, and atonement set in 1870s South Africa, is out now.

A #ReadingAfrica Wrap-up

First things first: whew! This year’s event was a huge one. We had three live panels, two written round-tables, two guest posts, a playlist, and one pre-recorded panel. We had a week-long #ReadingAfrica challenge, announced a new book, had two booklists on Bookshop.org (including one that was featured on the site’s front page) and even saw a #ReadingAfrica in-store bookstore display. This may have been our biggest one yet. Seriousl, look at all of this:

A publishers roundtable at LitHub
A discussion with literary magazine editors at Africa in Words
A guest post from author Buki Papillion
A discussion between Zimbabwean authors
A discussion between literary agents
Three live events (links below)

When we started #ReadingAfrica Week, we thought small. We were small, after all. We’d just unfurled our “Open for Business” banner earlier that year, and the idea was simple. We just wanted a way to announce ourselves and to shine a spotlight on our colleagues in indie publishing who were doing some of the same work we were. We couldn’t have imagined that six #ReadingAfrica Weeks later, we’d have formed incredible partnerships, built a reading community, gathered together writers and publishers, and because we’re readers too, we’ve also been excited to discover even more books and writers and publishers to love. This has been a great event.

In this post, we’re going to point you to everything we did this year, plus share one new bit of fun. We asked our panelists from our live events to share some of their favorite reads, and we’d like to share those with you. And don’t forget, you can find many of our panelists’ books in this booklist. The best way to support authors you love is to buy their books.

Meet the #ReadingAfrica 2022 Panelists!

We’re getting so close to #ReadingAfrica Week! We’ve reached out to bookstores, libraries, publishers, and other literary organizations to spread the word about our annual celebration of African literature. But maybe the best advertisement is introducing you to the amazing group of storytellers and creatives that will be appearing on our live panels this week. All panels begin at 1PM New York| 6PM London| 8PM South Africa, and you can register for them here. We created a booklist on Bookshop.org featuring some of the works from our panelists. For those who’s work isn’t available in the US, be sure to check out African Books Collective.

#ReadingAfrica Week 2022 Events

We’ve got a lot planned for this year’s celebration! Over the next few days, we’ll tell you more about our panelists and moderators. But these are some conversations you won’t want to miss. Register for one or all here.

Join Us for #ReadingAfrica Week 2022

“This place called Africa. You think you know it. You have learned about it in school. You have come across stories about it in the media. Perhaps, you have visited the place or better still live there and so you feel that you really know it. It is not until you pick up a book that you realize that you probably do not know this place called Africa — its many countries and peoples, its multitudes of languages and experiences, its overwhelming diversity and vibrancy — as well as you think you do. And that is the beauty and joy of reading African Literature — the constant discovery.”
—Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author of The Theory of Flight and The History of Man

We started #ReadingAfrica Week in 2017 as an annual celebration of African literature. Each year, during the first full week of December (this year December 4-10), 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.

Upcoming Events

Join us for these great events in May: Author Richard Conyngham and artist Tumi Mamabolo at Interference Archive and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu at the Contemporary African Voices Series.

Plus! You could win copies of both of Siphiwe’s books.

Author Richard Conyngham explored South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal’s basement archive, and through that research, was able to construct narratives of six cases of stories of resistance and rebellion from the period loosely known as the “Union years”—between South Africa’s unification in 1910 and the beginning of apartheid in 1948. These are stories of passive resisters, strikers, rebels, and revolutionaries fought back in the streets and in the courts.

The result of that work was the illustrated history, All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa, which was created with a team of South African artists. Join Richard and artist Tumi Mamabolo on Sunday, May 22 at 1:00 pm ET to explore the ways artists and creative writers can make use of archival materials, to discuss how archives and primary sources can be an effective avenue for creative work, and how the artists and writers filled archival gaps through creative decision-making to construct the stories we read in All Rise. Hosted by Interference Archive.

The Spark: Week of March 20

Hot from the Press

We’re so excited to have officially launched our GlobalComix page last week! GlobalComix is a platform for comics readers and creatives anywhere in the world to discover, read and publish comics and graphic novels online. You can check out our publisher page to read all of our graphic novels from your phone or computer, and be sure to give us a follow to be the first to access our upcoming releases!

Get out your calendars, because our authors have some amazing events coming up! This coming Tuesday March 29 at 6:30pm Pacific Time, Catalyst authors Richard Conyngham (All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa – A Graphic History) and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (The History of Man) will be appearing at PubWest Live, a virtual event hosted by PubWest and Massy Arts. The event also features Christopher Chávez, author of The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public. Register here!

And on April 5 at 7pm Pacific Time, join author Caroline Kurtz for a livestreamed reading and discussion of her new book Today is Tomorrow with Annie Bloom’s Books–and get a signed copy if you pre-order from Annie Bloom’s!

The Spark: Events Edition

Our authors are busy these days, and it looks like they’re mostly busy with events— lots of events! So this edition of The Spark will put them all in one handy place, so that you can fill your month with literary goodness.

Wednesday, March 16 at 3:00pm South African Time: Joanne Hichens (Divine Justice) appears on the panel, “Beyond the Words in Shorts Stories,“ as part of the Time of the Writer Festival, a virtual festival sponsored by The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts. The panel will discuss how their work answers the question: what does being haunted and hauntings mean in our southern African world, in the past, the present and the future?

Tuesday, March 29, at 6:30pm PT: Authors Richard Conyngham (All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa) and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (The History of Man) will be appearing at PubWest Live, a virtual event hosted by PubWest and Massy Arts. The event also features Christopher Chávez, author of The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public (University of Arizona Press). Register here

Tuesday, April 5, 7:00pm PT: Caroline Kurtz celebrates the release of her new memoir Today is Tomorrow with a virtual reading and discussion at Annie Bloom’s Books. And if you pre-order from Annie Bloom’s you can get a signed copy! More info and registration here

Friday, April 15, 12:00pm ET: Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu will be in conversation with Johns Hopkins University World Literature professor, Jeanne-Marie Jackson. Register here

This Week in Literary News: Week of May 30

We love seeing Catalyst Press authors in the news! This week, Young Blood author Sifiso Mzobe spoke with author Jacob Ross about crime writing in South Africa and the Caribbean, at Rofhiwa Books in Durham, NC. Check out the replay here. And this upcoming Wednesday, Rofhiwa Books hosts another Catalyst Press author, Barbara Boswell of Unmaking Grace, in conversation with Professor Shanna Benjamin about the intellectual legacies of Black women in South Africa and the US. Register for the event here, which will take place at 10:00am EST on this Wednesday July 9^th. Barbara is also featured in a new essay collection about Black feminist writers of South Africa. She’s joined by a host of other amazing writers including Catalyst author Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy). The collection got some great press this week.

It’s my favorite week of the year: which is 1. Hay Festival Week (which runs through this Sunday) and 2. The kickoff week of Pride Month! View the digital Hay Fest program to register for this weekend’s panels and catch up on all the ones you’ve already missed! Spoiler alert: it’s the best lineup yet. And to celebrate Pride, here’s a booklist from Harper’s Bazaar, queer romances from Book Riot, and a quiz to help you pick your first (and second, and third) LGBTQ+ read. Or check out the winners of the 33rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrates LGBTQ+ books and authors, announced this week. Happy reading—and happy Pride! Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of May 30”

Watch: Events with Catalyst Authors Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu & Sifiso Mzobe

This month, two of our authors— Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu and Sifiso Mzobe— had events. In the before-times, when you missed a great event, that was it; you saw some pictures, and your friends told you all about the fantastic time you missed. But that was then, and this is now. Now you have a second chance to check out these authors in person (or, you know, virtually, on your couch, in your pjs). Continue reading “Watch: Events with Catalyst Authors Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu & Sifiso Mzobe”