Tag: Bom Boy | CatalystPress

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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.

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”

This Week in Literary News: Week of April 4

This month is full of chances to see Catalyst authors in action. First up, catch Catalyst publisher/founder Jessica Powers and her brother and Broken Circle (Akashic Books) co-author Matthew as part of Cochise College’s Community Creative Writing Celebration on April 16. The reading will be followed by a Q&A, then an open mic. Learn more here. And on April 21, you can catch Sifiso Mzobe, author of the award-winning novel Young Blood, as he steps on the virtual stage for Stony Brook University’s Creative Writing and Literature Writers Speak Wednesday series. The event will be streamed live on the university’s YouTube channel. More information here. Sifiso’s novel is out on April 13.

In other news, following the controversy around American Dirt, Michael Ugarte of Africa is a Country, raises questions about another book, Palmeras en la Nieve, whose “critical reception among historians of Spanish colonization efforts in Africa has been less than positive.”

“Animals have inspired writers since the beginning of the written word” The New York Times presents “Writer’s Best Friend,” a look at some notable writers furry friends, including Jackie Collins’ poodle, George Orwell’s goat, Muriel, and Toni Morrison’s cat. Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of April 4”

This Week in Literary News, Week of November 15

Another week, another selection of some of the week’s news! (News here being defined as book and book-related. I’m not sure I have the strength to recap the news at-large).

Yewande Omotoso | photo by Victor Dlamini

Over at The New Internationalist, there’s a lovely short essay by Yewande Omotoso on why she’s filled her house with plants. Yewande is a regular contributor there, so be sure to check out more of her work— they are all just as lovely. You can also pick up her fantastic novel, Bom Boy, of which we are proud to be the US publisher.

There are two great pieces at LitHub. The first, from Rebecca Solnit asks readers to seriously consider what it being asked of them with post-election calls to bridge divides: “[T]he truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?” The second is a reprint of Walter Moseley’s speech from the National Book Awards where he was honored with The Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters: “There’s a great weight hanging over the reception of an award when the underlying subject is, the first Black man to receive… We the people who are darker than blue, we have been here, on this continent, in this storm for 400 years. […] Is this a dying gasp or a first breath? Is today different from any other day over the past 400 years? I prefer to believe that we are on the threshold of a new day, that this evening is but one of ten thousand steps being taken to recognize the potential of this nation.” And congratulations to all of the NBA winners! You can see a list of honorees here.

Continue reading “This Week in Literary News, Week of November 15”

This Week in Literary News: Week of October 4

Awards abound! The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to poet Louise Glück this week. The committee chose Glück, who has also won the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Glück is the first American woman to win the award since Toni Morrison 27 years ago, and only the 16th woman of the 117 winners, overall. New to Glück and want to know where to start with her work? Poet Fiona Sampson writes about Gluck’s work and chooses some of her favorite poems for The Guardian.

In other award news, the MacArthur Foundation announced the 21 recipients of its fellowship, also known as the “Genius Grant.” In addition to an evolutionary geneticist, a property law scholar, and a documentary filmmaker, this year’s grantees also included quite a few names from the literary world: authors, Jacqueline Woodson, Cristina Rivera Garza, Fred Moten, N. K. Jemisin, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and playwright Larissa FastHorse. Learn more about all of the fellows here.

Not an award, but a really big deal nonetheless: Kevin Young, currently cultural director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center and poetry editor of the New Yorker, has been named the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Per the Washington Post, during his time at the Schomburg, “Young created a Black Liberation Reading List with 95 books and coordinated programs. He also brought the Harlem-based archives of Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, Sonny Rollins, Fred “Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite, and Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee to the center as part of “Home to Harlem,” a program that focuses on how artists shaped, and were shaped by, the neighborhood.” Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of October 4”

This Week in Literary News, Week of May 3

Our weekly round-up of literary news here at Catalyst and beyond, is brought to you by our intern Naomi Valenzuela. Naomi is from Phoenix, Arizona and El Paso, Texas, and is majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in English & American Literature at the University of Texas, El Paso, with plans of working in the publishing business after graduation

Great week for Catalyst Press news!:

The New York Times has recently added one of our books, Outside The Lines by Ameera Patel, to its Globetrotting list under the Africa category. Check out the other books from other continents too!

SarahBelle Selig, who manages our South African operations, has an essay on World Literature Today. Read about the rules about living in isolation she learned from reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.

The Lion’s Binding Oath: and Other Stories by Ahmed Ismail Yusuf is on Brittle Paper‘s list of sixteen short story collections by African authors from indie presses (Us!)

Over at The Johannesburg Review of Books, Yewande Omotoso’s (author of Bom Boy) story titled “Boy” is highlighted as part of their “Best of the JRB” feature.

Last but not least, we have a new release! The Lolo Series by Niki Daly is out now, with Here Comes Lolo and Hooray for Lolo available in paperback or hardback!

In other literary news:

Brittle Paper has a feature about Botlhale, a YouTube channel that discusses African literature while also creating teaching tools for it.

Booksellers are finding creative ways to get books to their customers. Book Riot has a list of literary care packages from different bookstores, each with different focuses ranging from bilingual books to romance novels.

The BBC has an article about how the reading boom that has been happening during this pandemic, and the genres that the public could be picking up more and more.

Lastly, NPR informs us that Joy Harjo, the U.S.’s first Native American Poet Laureate, has received a second term by the Library of Congress.

Yewande Omotoso in The Sunday Times on Coronavirus, Silence, and How We Endure

Author Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy) recently published this essay in the Sunday Times (South Africa) about enduring the coronavirus pandemic. We have republished it here with permission of the author.

We Need The Courage to Live Through This Wide Awake
That which cannot be explained can be comprehended, and endured, in silence

Without intending to seem callous, the question comes to me: our world is fraught with crises, what is it about this one that has captured us so?

Perhaps it is in Covid-19’s knack for globality, its capacity – helped along by our technologies of fast transportation – to roam the planet touching what it pleases. This free-roaming characteristic, the apparent opposite of the ecological crisis, the malaria crisis or, localised in a different way (within certain kinds of bodies for instance), the rape crisis.

As Arundhati Roy put it in a recent article in the Financial Times: “Coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.”

Covid-19, like a psychopathic bank robber, has started taking lives, all kinds, and, however slow some have been to take notice, it now has our full attention.

Usually, now, at this part in the movie, the bank robber makes demands, the deft police officer negotiates and, depending whose side we are meant to be on (the cops or the robbers), the movie resolves itself; someone either goes to jail or gets away with a million dollars.

But this is not a movie, of course. It’s real life. Still, as someone who worships at the altar of story, unfaltering in my faith that fiction bears truth, I wonder: if we personified this virus for a few seconds, what are Covid-19’s demands?

Another way of phrasing that question: what is this moment really asking of us apart from the essential fussing with disinfectant wipes?

Continue reading “Yewande Omotoso in The Sunday Times on Coronavirus, Silence, and How We Endure”

This Week in Literary News, Week of April 12

It has been an exciting week of news for Catalyst Press!

We start off with an excerpt from Peter Church’s Crackerjack, the first book in the Dark Web Trilogy. Read it on The Johannesburg Review of Books.

We have reviews for not one, but two, of our books over at Publishers Weekly! There’s a starred review for Ameera Patel’s Outside The Lines, as well as a review for Bitter Pill by Peter Church. Both books are out in June.

Check out this essay by Yewande Omotoso, author of Bom Boy, over on The Sunday Times (South Africa) where she writes about COVID-19 and how it has shined a light upon the problems of the world.

We have also created a list of our educational resources. Take a look at some of our published books, sorted by age level, to find activities and resources to fit your needs!

And in other literary news:

The New York Times has an article about how some librarians continue to work through the pandemic after many of the nation’s libraries remain closed.

Need to find some new tasks for your free time? Book Riot has made a to-do list and guide to spring clean your books— from your shelves to your digital collections.

Yes! Magazine has an essay from Myriam Gurba and how the controversy around American Dirt inspired a movement for Latinx writers.

Essay by Yewande Omotoso featured at LitHub

Head over to LitHub to read this thoughtful essay about the limits of categorization in literature by Bom Boy author Yewande Omotoso. She writes about identity and place, and particularly, how narrow ways of thinking affect African authors. Yewande’s award-winning novel is out now; pick up your copy today!

At a time when I feel what is expected of me as an African author is to signal and frame my typology, me and my books remain without type; what I write will never be instantly recognizable. A reader once chastised me saying they couldn’t work out whether Hortensia, the protagonist in The Woman Next Door, was black or not till a few pages in. Another reader, more in admiration, mused that despite the Yoruba name on the cover she couldn’t work out who the author of the book she was reading was, from where, speaking what language, living in which town.

I would like to be able to write these kinds of books, to believe that there are readers who are happy to look not only within the margins for story but also beyond. Someone who buys my book for African Perspectives would most likely be disappointed. What they will find in the pages will simply be story, meandering and difficult to pin down. I’ve despaired enough times to have this as my writerly fate. I’ve longed to exist in the center of Place, to have deep insight and access to zeitgeist. I may well learn, I probably ought to, it’ll make me a better writer. But in the meanwhile I will apply everything I have to write the marginal stories that come.

Read the full essay at LitHub

Q&A with Yewande Omotoso

Last year was quite a year for Yewande Omotoso. Her most recent release, The Woman Next Door, earned Yewande a spot on the shortlist for the Dublin Literary Award, and a Hurston/Wright Award nomination. We’re betting that readers will want to read more from this talented author in 2019, and so we couldn’t be more excited to be the North American publisher for her novel Bom Boy.

First released in South Africa, this novel of loss and belonging earned Yewande the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize, and it was also shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature. She has revised the novel for its North American release on February 26. Pre-order your copy today!

We chatted with Yewande about her process, writers she admires, and what it felt like to revisit to Bom Boy after many years. This Q&A is the full version of the excerpt from our newsletter. Learn about Catalyst events, authors, giveaways, and read more author Q&As like this by subscribing to our newsletter! Continue reading “Q&A with Yewande Omotoso”