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The Spark

Hot from the Press

Halley’s Comet by Hannes Barnard got a great mention in this article about representative YA literature, On My Papa’s Shoulders is a staff pick at the LA County Library, and in case you missed the big news from last week: Idza Luhumyo’s short story “Five Years Next Sunday”, featured in Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa, was awarded the 2022 Caine Prize alongside a record setting shortlist!

Awards News

The Miles Franklin Award pulled John Hughes’ The Dogs from its 2022 longlist after Hughes admitted to plagiarizing Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War. But people are now drawing similarities to other works of classic literature, including The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, and All is Quiet on the Western Front.

Announced this week: the winners of the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrate LGBTQ+ literature; Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness takes home the Women’s Prize for Fiction; and The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan and translated from Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler wins the 2022 EBRD Literature Prize.

Costa announced unexpectedly that the 2021 Costa Book Awards were its last, and the Society of Authors announced a new prize, the ACDI Literary Prize, which will celebrate positive representation of disability in literature.

The Spark: The List of Lists Edition

Welcome to The Spark, our mini newsletter featuring news from Catalyst and beyond. If you’d like to subscribe to the full size version, click here. Same great news, in a larger size. Anyway, onwards!

In Catalyst news, you can hear two of our talented authors showing off their skills behind the mic in these conversations hosted by PEN South Africa. Richard Conyngham, author of the recently-released graphic novel All Rise, joins Rebecca Hall, author of Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, for a conversation led by professor Hlonipha Mokoena on “historical revolts and acts of resistance, working with archival records, pedagogy, and the relationship between illustration and written narratives.” And Unmaking Grace author, Barbara Boswell leads a conversation between poets Natalie Diaz and vangile gantsho. They discuss “art and healing, sensualities, the violence of the English language as well as how it is transformed by those who speak it.” Both All Rise and Unmaking Grace are out now.

The Spark: Award Season Edition

Hot from the Press

We got some wonderful awards news this week for one of the authors from Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa! Mbozi Haimbre was named a finalist for the African Speculative Fiction Society’s Nommo Award for Best Short Story for her story, “Shelter.” We are so thrilled for Mbozi, and hope you will join us in celebrating! Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa is the 2021 anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a nonprofit based in Cape Town, South Africa on a mission to elevate new and emerging African authors. And it’s available now worldwide!

This week, we celebrated World Bee Day with (buzz-worthy!) excerpts from two Catalyst titles on our site, and LitNet posted this amazing interview with Hannes Barnard, Halley’s Comet author and translator. And ICYMI, two Catalyst authors participated in great events this week that you can catch up on now. First, All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion author Richard Conyngham and illustrator Tumi Mamabolo took part in a virtual event with Interference Archive, moderated by our very own Catalyst Press publicist Ashawnta Jackson. And later in the week, The Theory of Flight and The History of Man author (and recent Windham Campbell Prize winner!) Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu was hosted by the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign as part of their Contemporary African Voices series.

Continue reading “The Spark: Award Season Edition”

The Spark: The “It’s May!” Edition

Hot from the Press

Two Catalyst author events we’ve been waiting for have almost arrived! On Sunday May 22 at 1pm EST, join Richard Conyngham and Tumi Mamabolo, the author and one of the illustrators behind All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa, for “Archives and Storytelling,” a virtual event hosted by Interference Archive. The pair will be discussing how archives can be an important tool for creative storytelling, and how they used them to bring the stories in All Rise to life. The event is free, but registration is required. Sign up here, and don’t forget to pre-order your copy of the book which hits shelves next week!

To learn more about the creation of All Rise, check out this Q&A with the author, just released this week.

Continue reading “The Spark: The “It’s May!” Edition”

Reading Naturally

It’s Earth Day! We’ve only got the one planet, and today (and every day) is a good day to reflect on the ways we can make it better— today and tomorrow. We have a few books, for readers of all ages, that tackle some of our biggest environmental issues from a variety of perspectives. And if you keep reading, you’ll also get a peek at some forthcoming titles that also explore our connection to the natural world.

Congratulations, Siphiwe!

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author of The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, was among the eight winners of this year’s prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize. The award, which “calls attention to literary achievement and provides writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns,” is administered by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Siphiwe is joined by two other African writers on this year’s recipient list, Emmanuel Iduma from Nigeria and fellow Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga, who said of Siphiwe’s win, “I am delighted to see that Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is a recipient of the Windham Campbell Award for Fiction this year. This is an extraordinary distinction, one that is particularly meaningful for Zimbabwean literature at a time when political repression and economic stagnation undermine artistic expression in the country.”

In the announcement on the organization’s website, Siphiwe is called “both a chronicler and a conjurer whose soaring imagination creates a Zimbabwean past made of anguish and hope, of glory and despair.” The prize, which comes with a $165,000 award, gives writers the time and the space they need to create without financial concerns, something that Siphiwe looks forward to. “I cannot even begin to fully articulate all the amazing things that this prize means for me at this stage in my career,” Siphiwe says. “There are still so many stories waiting to be told and now thanks to the Windham-Campbell Prizes at Yale, I will be able to tell them. I am both immensely honored and deeply humbled by this recognition.”

All of us at Catalyst Press send our hugest congratulations to this talented author, and we can’t wait to see what she creates next. Visit the Windham-Campbell website to see the full list of winners.

Introducing The Spark

Welcome to The Spark, our weekly roundup of news from Catalyst and beyond. This is our first edition with our brand new fancy name. Think of The Spark as a quick burst of news, a little shorter than our monthly(ish) newsletter, but just as fun. A fun-sized version of the Catalyst news you know and love. If you’re not subscribed to the full-sized version, be sure to subscribe here!

Hot from the Press

Two great mentions for Catalyst Press authors this week! Nigerian author Wole Talabi named his top ten favorite stories of 2021, and two (!!) stories from Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa were listed (“Shelter” by Mbozi Haimbe, and “Five Years Next Sunday” by Idza Luhumyo). We are proud to be the North American publisher for Disruption, available in stores and online. And Consortium Library Express featured a sneak peak of Niki Daly’s newest Lolo book, Fly High, Lolo. Fly High, Lolo is available for pre-order now. For more info on the Lolo early reader series, check out the “From the Backlist” section below.

This Week in Literary News

We’ve changed our weekly literary news roundup just a bit for the new year. From now on, you’ll find tips on #ReadingAfrica all year round, great titles to check out from our backlist, and of course, other bookish news from across the internet. Think of this as a mini newsletter (for the regular-sized serving of our newsletter, subscribe here). Happy reading!

“These books may have hard topics but they essentially are a needed part of education. They might be brutal and hard to swallow, but they are the best examples of real-world problems and history.” Students give their thoughts on the book bans happening across the nation.

Today we celebrate the birthdays of both ✨Audre Lorde AND Toni Morrison✨ It should be a national holiday, right? pic.twitter.com/1HeuWVy566
— Feminist Press (@FeministPress) February 18, 2022

What a day! Both Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde were born on this day (February 18). Here are a few places to learn more about these two influential authors:

The Legacy of Audre Lorde at The Paris Review
Audre Lorde at the Poetry Foundation
The Genius of Toni Morrison’s Only Short Story at The New Yorker
13 Groundbreaking Toni Morrison Works to Read Right Now at Oprah Daily

This Week in Literary News

Public libraries are doing great, but literary magazines–not so much. Apple Books launched its new book club, and We Need Diverse Books started a grant for educators teaching diverse stories. The Rathbones Folio Prize and the Waterstone Children’s Book Prize announced their shortlists, and the National Book Foundation announced its inaugural titles for its new Science and Literature program. Ashley Bryan, beloved author of children’s books on Black lives including Beautiful Blackbird, died at age 98.

This Week in Literary News: The #ReadingAfrica Recap Edition

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for joining us this week for our fifth annual #ReadingAfrica Week, our annual celebration of African literature. In lieu of a literary news blog this week, we decided to give you a #ReadingAfrica recap, to share all of the fun activities we hosted this week in one place.

From virtual events to social media challenges to playlists, we wait all year for #ReadingAfrica, because it’s the best opportunity to interact with YOU, our Catalyst family. While our books celebrate African authors and African stories all year round, #ReadingAfrica is such a great way to bring everyone together and make some noise—and this year the noise was the loudest it has ever been!

So if you missed out on the fun, don’t worry: #ReadingAfrica week 2021 may be over, but thanks to our friends over at LitNet, LitHub, and CrimeReads, you can check out the full recordings and transcripts of the events you missed by clicking the links below. Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: The #ReadingAfrica Recap Edition”