Shaka Rising, the first book in our African Graphic Novel Series, makes its debut in South Africa in September! We’re pretty excited. Ahead of the book’s release, its author Luke W. Molver, was interviewed by South African newspaper The Independent. Some highlights: Continue reading “Luke W. Molver in The Independent”
Q&A with Jive Media Africa
Our monthly newsletter is full of good stuff. We’ve got author news, events, and special sales. We have a good time there. Part of that good time is also being able to publish Q&As with our authors and partners that we then get to share with you. We’ve been republishing these Q&As here at our blog (you can read them here), but if you want to be among the first to read them, you can subscribe to our newsletter here!
The Q&A we’re sharing this time is with our South African partners, Jive Media Africa. We’ve teamed up with them to create our imprint Story Press Africa. Story Press Africa’s mission is to bring African histories and figures to life in the pages of our African Graphic Novel Series. The first installment in the series was Shaka Rising, and we’re so excited to bring more stories like this to readers everywhere. Continue reading “Q&A with Jive Media Africa”
Do You Have a Story to Tell?
Story Press Africa, our collaborative imprint with South African media company Jive Media Africa, is looking for submissions from artists and illustrators who want to tell the stories and histories of Africa as part of our African Graphic Novel Series.
The first installment in the series, Shaka Rising—a graphic novel for young readers—told the story of a young Zulu leader’s rise to power against the backdrop of one of southern Africa’s most turbulent times. We want to continue bringing these stories to the page and to readers everywhere. Please read our submission guidelines and get in touch if you have a proposal. We look forward to hearing from you!
Hello, FanCon Cape Town!
Last month, author and illustrator Luke Molver (Shaka Rising) headed to Cape Town for FanCon, an annual comic and pop-culture festival. He shared his thoughts about the event (and some pretty great pictures) over at Durban Is Yours:
Organized by Readers’ Den Comic Shop and now in its third year, the annual comic and pop-culture festival was held in Cape Town from 28th – 29th April, to its largest attendance yet. Local and national comic creators, cosplayers, artists and fans engaged with international guests in a big ol’ pop-culture hootenanny of superheroic grandeur.
Even in the most affectionate way, I hesitate to use the words ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ to describe such events nowadays. Pop culture being so ubiquitous in our media and daily lives, these interests can hardly be described as ‘niche’ any longer… and events like FanCon show that these interests are alive and passionate in South Africa, in bright comic book colours and punch-out- the-page costumes.
The cosplay cruisin’ around the con ranged from amateur to professional, and there were some insanely imaginative and creative outfits paraded about. You’d be amazed what can be constructed outta some glue, a shoebox, a few toilet rolls and a broomstick, and I’ve got a heckuva lot of respect for the home-made effort put into some of those costumes. I sold comics to a Jedi while chatting to the Guardians of the Galaxy, and borrowed a light from Daenerys Targaryan as she shared a gwaai with ol’ Jonny Snow. Workshops from international professionals such as Riki Lecotey and Chris Donio, who worked on props for the new Avengers Infinity War movie, gave cosplay enthusiasts and casual visitors the opportunity to literally learn the tricks of the trade.
Read the rest here!
Check Your Mailbox! Shaka’s on the Way!
Pretty soon, a whole bunch of you will be walking to your mailboxes, and there, tucked between a magazine, grocery store flyers, an electric bill, and all of the other assorted things that show up in the mail these days, will be something we’re super proud of—a copy of Shaka Rising. Through your support and generosity, we were able to fund our Kickstarter project and get started on the next installment of our African Graphic Novel Series. It’s all because of you.
When we joined forces with the good folks at Jive Media Africa to form the imprint Story Press Africa, it was because we wanted to share all the wonder, the excitement, and the richness of African history and knowledge. Historical figures like Shaka have a lot to tell us about, not just African history, but about our world, and we’re thrilled to share it with you.
A lot of people made this happen. A lot of people cared about sharing Shaka’s story with their kids, their libraries, and their communities and that’s why we made our goal—people like you supported this brand new thing we’ve started. Shaka Rising is the first in a long, long line of African Graphic Novel from Story Press Africa. We’re just getting started and we’re so happy to have you along for the ride.
Thanks for believing in us and the work we’re doing! If you like Shaka Rising, be sure to spread the word! Leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, your website, or in some sort of elaborate semaphore (if you pick semaphore, please send a video. We’d love to see that). Let your schools, libraries, and community groups know that you got your hands on an awesome graphic novel that’s teaching African history in a fun and accessible way, and that they should get in on it, too. Basically, tell everyone you know that Shaka Rising is here and that because of you, a second installment is on the way.
A big THANK YOU to all of you who donated to our campaign, and be sure to keep watching to see what’s next for us! An especially huge thanks to our partners at Jive Media Africa!
Many thanks to our donors:
Einar Petersen
Mary Fountaine
Emily Dietrick
Ntsike
Anonymous
Erin Subramanian
Jamil Burns
Paul Glasser
Ray “Raytoons.Net” Mullikin
Noel Mills
Chandra Orrill
Shean, Semeicha and Sapphira Mohammed
Robert L Vaughn
Tinsley
Lisa Jensen
In honor of Michael Kromberg
Mary Puthoff
Tessa Moon Leiseth
Peter LaPrade
The Spitzers
Rosie Tullis-Thompson
The Briar Patch
Nate Gillespie
Maureen Babb
Rico Schacherl
The Bells
Mark Gunter
Rachel
Matt Powers
Kathy Shepler
Alberta Jackson
Catherine Ndungu-Case
Assembly of Literatures for Adolescents of NCTE
Derek W.
Matty Sankauskas
Anonymous
Dennis and Becky
Helen Musselman
Edi
Glynnis Belchers
Justin
Kathleen Shannon
Sarah
Scott
Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and Platinum Studios
Help Us Bring the Next Chapter of Shaka’s Life to the Page
Happy New Year, everyone! It has been a really busy, really exciting 2017 for us here at Catalyst. We’ve done a lot of learning, growing, and building this year and we can’t wait to keep bringing that energy into 2018.
As the year begins, we find ourselves right in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to bring the second volume of Shaka Rising to life, and we’d love your help. Check out our project to learn more about our plans, and while you’re there make sure to take a look at some of the fantastic rewards we’re offering to our donors. We’d love to be able to send you one of those. Also at our project page, Catalyst founder Jessica Powers has written a few words about her life and why this book, this project, and this press mean so much to her:
When I was growing up on the U.S.- Mexico border, there were no books that reflected the reality of my life. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder avidly, to the point where I grew my hair past my waist and only wore dresses. I wanted to be a pioneer girl. Anything was better than the desert town I lived in!
Then I discovered Anne of Green Gables, and all the companion books, and I desperately wished I was Canadian, and perhaps an orphan, growing up on the lush, mysterious, wild island of Prince Edward Island. (As an aside, I visited as an adult and was disappointed that it was basically farmland, with potatoes being the main crop.)
As a kid, I looked around at my neighborhood and it looked to me like nothing more than a dusty desert town of broken down trucks. I didn’t see the magic of migrant workers who passed our house, sometimes several times a day, following the power lines from Mexico to the chili fields of New Mexico. I didn’t understand the musicality that the lilting Spanish I heard every day was infusing into my language. I didn’t realize the way Mexican culture had surrounded and gentled the harsher white Anglo culture that gave birth to my parents.
As a young adult, I bumbled my way into understanding the beautiful gift I had been given: that, instead of the invisible privilege many white children of America are born into, I had grown up witnessing daily the cycle of death and rebirth that accompanies the immigrant experience, the grace that is embodied in failure and the willingness not to let that crush you but to get up and try again, and–not to romanticize anything–the emotional and physical violence that accompanies the harsh reality of poverty. The experiences of immigrant families weren’t abstract experiences. I saw it in my friends’ families and the families of boys I had crushes on and with people at church.
Perhaps even more pertinent, I grew up as a minority. I was a white child with parents from Iowa and South Dakota but almost everybody I knew was Mexican or Mexican-American. Everyday life meant reaching outside of my own home culture. It meant, too, that I was enveloped in another culture to such an extent that to this day it feels like home. And it meant that I’ve always been interested in the ways that race, culture, belief systems, and immigration impact nations and their histories.
Read more about Jessica’s (and Catalyst’s!) story over at our Kickstarter page.
Notes from NCTE
November was a busy month here at Catalyst/Story Press Africa HQ. Our authors were shining at other blogs and getting stellar reviews for their great work. Meanwhile, our publisher, editor, and general get-things-done-er, Jessica has been pretty busy, too. She’s been donning her cloak (she switched the cape out for it) at readings and conferences across the country in promotion for her new book, Broken Circle (Akashic Books), with (of course) a healthy dose of Catalyst thrown in.
Most recently, Jessica and her co-author (her brother Matt) were at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) in St. Louis. Jessica presented on books and social justice at NCTE, and the duo were also being awesome on a panel at ALAN. And two of our books, We Kiss Them With Rain and Shaka Rising were presented in front of nearly 600 educators at ALAN.
And you know what? You know why we do this thing we do? Why we play with words, arranging and rearranging them, turning them over, just to make sure that for a minute, for a page, for a paragraph, for a sentence someone gets to find themselves in book? I could tell you, but I think Matt said it way better than I could on the panel.
In recounting his struggles with reading as a child and how much teachers, storytellers, and people who love literature can make a difference in helping a kid see themselves in words, Matt (beautifully) said:
“In your classrooms, you are a family. You can help give kids who need it an identity, a story of themselves, that helps them make it.”
That’s why we do it. Every reader was that kid once, and maybe still is. Each of our books, from the darkest crime novel to an educational graphic novel, is about reaching a reader.
One thing I’ve always loved is hearing one of our authors, Martin Steyn (Dark Traces) talk about what got him into writing. It was reading Stephen King and losing himself in that world that made want to create that feeling for someone else. It’s unbearably cool that we get to do that here, that we get to share stories and let storytellers do their thing.
Excerpt from Shaka Rising
Tales from Booth 3120A: Catalyst Press at ALA Annual Conference
I’m going to pick just a few words to describe Catalyst’s weekend at the American Librarian Association‘s Annual Conference. Here goes: Authors, diversity, publishers, and superheroes. Stick with me. Continue reading “Tales from Booth 3120A: Catalyst Press at ALA Annual Conference”
Shaka Rising