Category: Travel

This Week in Literary News: Week of February 21

Our friends at the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative have welcomed a new writer on board. Please join us in welcoming their newest reviewer, South African author Lebohang Masango who joins the #WorldKidLit Wednesday team.

There’s a short Q&A at Africa in Words with Lizzy Attree. Among the many things she does, Lizzy is also the director of Short Story Day Africa (SSDA), and we’ll be working with her and her team this year as the US publisher for the SSDA anthology Disruption. Stay tuned for more information on that!

“On March 6, 1971, a group of some of the top musicians from the United States -– Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and more -– boarded a plane bound for Ghana to perform in a musical celebration that was dubbed the “Soul to Soul Festival.”’ Afropop Worldwide revisits the festival on its 50th anniversary with musicologist John Collins, poet and scholar Tsitsi Ella Jaji (who, by the way, wrote a beautiful blurb for Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Theory of Flight), concert goers and more. They’ve also included a companion piece of selected readings and videos.

CAPE TOWN: A PLACE BETWEEN BY HENRY TROTTER

Africa is a Country radio explores the musical history of Cape Town with New School professor Sean Jacobs and filmmaker Dylan Valley. And after listening to this conversation, you want to dig into the complex and intersecting histories of the Mother City, be sure to pick up a copy of Henry Trotter’s Cape Town: A Place Between, the first book in our Intimate Geographies Series.

Submissions have opened for the Kendeka Prize for African Literature. The award honors unpublished fiction and non-fiction by African authors.

Black Women Radicals has put together a great list of 16 Black feminist archive projects. From hip-hop, to visual art, to Caribbean history, there are so many fantastic projects to explore.

“While the cost of living continues to rise and older generations of activists fade away — making it harder for free-spirited artistry to exist — we gather tightly to embrace Ferlinghetti’s cathedral in all its dusty homeliness and independent boldness on the corner of Columbus and Broadway.” The literary world is mourning the loss of poet, publisher, and founder of City Lights books, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Read remembrances from SF Gate, the New York Times, The Nation, and from his community at City Lights. And, of course, spend some time with his poetry.

The New York Times‘ George Gene Gustines writes about a new graphic novel, Muhammad Ali, Kinshasa 1974, that “retells the events of the legendary heavyweight title fight in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

KING SHAKA BY LUKE W. MOLVER

Black History Month may be coming to a close, but amazing books by Black authors and stories of Black heroes and history are important any time of year. CLMP has put together a reading list of books and magazines from small presses that celebrate this history. We’ve got two titles on the list— The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, which uses fiction to explore the history of Zimbabwe, and King Shaka by Luke Molver, a graphic novel from our Story Press Africa imprint that explores the life of legendary Zulu leader King Shaka.

CrimeReads has a fantastic conversation with John Copenhaver, Cheryl Head, and Kristen Lepionka, the judges for Sisters in Crime’s Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers, on the state of crime writing for the LGBTQIA+ community.

And finally, Tina Jordan at the New York Times looks at the history of literary games and puzzles in the paper’s pages. “In this era of crossword puzzles, Words With Friends and The Times’s own Spelling Bee, it’s fascinating to look back at just how long the paper has been printing word games and literary quizzes.” You can test your book knowledge with a quiz from 1989.

An Update from Catalyst Publisher/Founder Jessica Powers

Dear friends of Catalyst Press,

In just a few short weeks, it feels like the world as we have known it has collapsed. We’re all trying to keep in touch as best we can, and those of us who can work from home are doing so, but we know that a lot of people have lost or will lose their jobs; we know that people will have trouble paying rent or feeding their families. And meanwhile, all of us have to deal with the fear and uncertainty of an illness that can be deadly, and may affect us or our loved ones.

The economic shutdown of the USA has affected book publishers in myriad ways. Amazon is making shipping of books a low priority. Independent booksellers have changed the way they work with customers, and are working to ship online orders as well as provide curbside pickups. But booksellers and publishers alike are going to be dramatically affected by the quarantines and shelter-in-place orders, primarily through loss of sales, but also through loss of marketing opportunities to get the word out about our books through reviews and other outlets that are also not operating under optimal conditions (or at all.)

Catalyst Press is committed to weathering this storm but, as a new small press we are especially vulnerable to a tank in sales. This is true for all small presses, not least for us. For those of you who really want to support us during this time, here are a few ways:

  • If you’re in North America, you can order new and older books directly from our website or from independent bookstores at this link.
  • South Africa is in a severe lockdown right now, and deliveries of books aren’t happening. In the meantime, you can order ebooks at Amazon. We always want to support independent bookstores but in this particular case, please do buy ebooks on Amazon! But if you want to buy physical books and you can wait for them to be delivered, you can order copies from LAPA, our distributor in South Africa, and they will resume deliveries when they can.
  • We are also able to accept one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation through Fractured Atlas, a 501 (c) (3) arts organization that has offered us fiscal sponsorship. This is an option we’d love for you to consider anytime, of course!
  • Even if ordering books or offering donations is not possible for you at this time, we love hearing from our supporters on social media, this blog, or via email, so please feel free to drop us a kind note anytime. We’d love to hear about past books we published that you loved, future books you’re looking forward to, or suggestions for future books.

Thanks guys. Keep in touch and stay well!

Jessica, Publisher & Founder, Catalyst Press (with imprints Story Press Africa & Powers Squared)

January New Releases

This has been a busy month for us! We’ve started the new year with three new releases (plus ended the last year with one, which is also included here). All of these are available at your favorite booksellers and right here at our site.

The Thousand Steps by Helen Brain

The first book in Helen’s Fiery Spiral series for Young Adult readers, The Thousand Steps is the story of 16-year-old Ebba who has lived her entire life in a bunker deep within Cape Town’s Table Mountain. When she is suddenly elevated from the bunker, she finds that everything she knew about her life, and the world “above,” was wrong. Now shouldering the immense responsibility of her new life, Ebba must fight to save her friends still trapped in the bunker and facing execution any day.

Dark Video by Peter Church

The next installment in Peter Church’s Dark Web Trilogy, Dark Video is set in the early days of internet video sharing. A group of wealthy people are willing to pay any price for unimaginable videos. Cape Town college student Alistair Morgan is lured deeper and deeper into this sinister underground world where reality blurs and morals.

 


Cape Town: A Place Between by Henry Trotter

The first in our Intimate Geographies Series — short books of around 100 pages— which aim to help readers go beyond the surface of fascinating places. Cape Town: A Place Between weaves the history of city’s intersecting histories and cultures with Henry’s own experiences as an American living, working, and building a life there for nearly twenty years. While not a traditional travel guide, Cape Town invites readers into the city with hopes of sparking first-hand exploration with its mix of travel narrative and literary non-fiction.

Unmaking Grace coverUnmaking Grace by Barbara Boswell
Released in December

Unmaking Grace is a story an intimate portrayal of the legacy of inter-generational violence set in Cape Town in the 1980s. In this gripping novel, we meet Grace whose life is forever altered by her father’s violence. In her efforts to break the cycle in her own life, she finds a measure of peace in the stability of her middle-class lifestyle—complete with loving husband and baby. But when a figure from her past returns, Grace realizes that breaking free will be more difficult than she imagined.

 

What to Expect When You’re Expecting (to Read a Book from Catalyst Press)

2020 is just around the corner (which, is simply unbelievable. Wasn’t it just summer?!), so we wanted to give you a preview about some of the great books we’ve got planned for the new year. This post will cover, roughly, the first half of 2020 (with one book that’s set for release in late 2019), and part two, covering the rest of the year, is coming soon.

Many of these books are ready for pre-order right now, so if someone (you) were looking to add a few books to the to-be-read pile, someone (you) would be in luck. All right, onward! Continue reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting (to Read a Book from Catalyst Press)”

Introducing the Intimate Geographies Series

In January 2020, we’ll be releasing Cape Town: A Place Between by writer and scholar Henry Trotter, the first volume in our new Intimate Geographies Series. Henry, the author of Sugar Girls & Seamen: A Journey into the World of Dockside Prostitution in South Africa (Ohio University Press), will also be serving as the series editor going forward.

We’ve asked Henry to introduce readers to the series, its goals, and our plans for future Intimate Geographies titles. Cape Town: A Place Between releases on January 3, 2020; pre-orders are available now. Continue reading “Introducing the Intimate Geographies Series”