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!
Let’s start out with some Catalyst news! Niki Daly, the author of several children’s books including the Lolo series, was recently awarded a South African Children’s Laureate Award by the University of the Western Cape Faculty of Education and the SA Festival of Children’s Literature. In presenting Niki the prize, children’s lit scholar and editor Dr. Mia Oosthuizen, said it nicely “you capture the imagination and children’s magnificent everyday lives.”
“Thirty years ago, few people in the art world were interested in Africa. The images of the continent that circulated at the time were primarily news images of famines and wars. At best, people had an exotic vision of it.” Great article on howRevue Noire, a magazine and publishing house that brought a nuanced view of Africa through photography.
This week marked the release of our third graphic novel— Madame Livingstone written by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie, illustrated by Barly Baruti, and translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger. You may remember this book from such illustrious appearances as The New York Times,Publishers Weekly, and Foreword Reviews This historical tale of friendship and adventure is set in Congo during World War I. Stay tuned for a Q&A with the book’s creators later this month!
Mark your calendars for this great talk: On June 22, NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs presents a conversation with author Kevin Adonis Browne and Temple University Global Studies professor, Harvey R. Neptune on “Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture”
Over at AfroPop, an exploration of the Cuban intervention in Angola, and “Through music, interviews, and historical radio clips, producer Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and Its Music, tells the story of Cuba’s massive commitment in Africa, from the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent independence of Congo, to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.” Listen to the story here.Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of June 6”
We love seeing Catalyst Press authors in the news! This week, Young Bloodauthor 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 9th. 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.
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.”
In Catalyst news, Barbara Boswell’s new nonfiction book And Wrote my Story Anyway (Wits University Press) was just shortlisted for the South African Humanities & Social Sciences Award in the Best Non-Fiction Single Authored Monographs category! We are proud to publish Barbara’s novel Unmaking Grace in North America.
Another of our authors, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, will be (virtually) appearing on April 9 at 2:00 pm EST at Mercer University for a reading and discussion of her new book The Theory of Flight. Check our event calendar for more info and the event Zoom link.
In other awards news, the National Book Critics Circle Award winners were announced this week, and Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’owas just nominated as author and translator for the International Booker Prize, making his novel The Perfect Nine the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted.
In Catalyst news, two of our wonderful authors got works published this week! In New Frame, Unmaking Graceauthor Barbara Boswell writes on the role of Booker shortlisted author Tsitsi Dangarembga’s art and activism in Zimbabwe and beyond, and The Lion’s Binding Oathauthor Ahmed Ismail Yusuf evaluates what the death of George Floyd and – just a few months later and a few blocks away – the death of Somali-American Dolal Idd means for the future of the American police force.
In celebrity book news, E.L. James, famed author of the Fifty Shades of Grey series, announced a new book in the series to be published this summer: Freed, written from Christian Grey’s perspective. Fans of the cult television series “American Horror Story” are reading Dante’s The Divine Comedy after a fan theory went viral, and a self-published cookbook by Andy Warhol is going to auction later this month and is expected to sell for no less than $30,000. And ICYMI (although I don’t see how), Dr. Seuss‘ publishing house has made the decision to cease printing of six of the author’s earlier children’s books, including McElligot’s Pool and And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, on account of racist imagery and derogatory character portrayals. Read up on the debate, then check out this Guardian piece on the history of removing racist sections from children’s books and one poet’s response on Book Riot. Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of March 7”
Lots of great stuff from all around the book world this week. Let’s get right to it!
Georgia College & State University is hosting a virtual African Writers Festival this month, featuring some amazing writers including Mona Eltahawy, Maaza Mengiste, and Novuyo Tshuma, among many, many more.
Black history is often reduced to moments, and those moments can become myths. As great as it is that we celebrate Black History Month, we need to be careful that the myths and moments don’t flatten, particularly with the Civil Rights Movement, what is often long, intentional, hard work that can’t be reduced to a single moment. At the New York Times, author Jeanne Theoharis, reflects on what this flattening has done to the work of Rosa Parks. “‘Over the years, I have been rebelling against second-class citizenship. It didn’t begin when I was arrested,’ Mrs. Parks reminded interviewers time and again.” Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of January 31”
The impact from the devastating fires across the Western United States has extended to bookstores and publishers, Publishers Weekly reports. “This is a very scary time to be a bookseller and a small business owner,” says Kit Steinaway, the programs manager at the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC). The article notes some ways that you can help, including by donating to BINC, an organization that provides aids to booksellers during fire season. If you’d like information about other organizations that can use your help, this article at The Cutoffers some suggestions.
The Farm by Max Annas
This month is National Translation Month, and we’re proud to publish the English-language translations of several fantastic books. National Translation Month falls right after Women in Translation Month, so if you’re looking to read globally, there have been so many great suggestions over the past two months. Over at CLMP, there’s been two round-ups of books from indie publishers, and we’re in both! Sacrificed by Chanette Paul (translated by Elsa Silke) has a spot on the Women in Translation list, while The Wall by Max Annas, translated by Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds is on the National Translation Month list. And speaking of Max, his latest thriller, The Farm, also translated by Rachel, released earlier this week! Congratulations, Max!
The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Max gets double congratulations this week, as his German-language thriller, Morduntersuchungskommission was named the winner of the 2020 Cologne Crime Award. And in other award news, the Booker Prize has released its shortlist. Of the six nominated shortlisted books for the prestigious award, four are from debut authors, four are women-authored, and two are by African authors, including Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body. Aside from being fans of her work, Tsitsi is special here at Catalyst since she graciously provided a blurb for our forthcoming release The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu. Tsitsi called Siphiwe’s debut “A dazzling novel of delicate and astonishing magic.” The Theory of Flight is out in January. Continue reading “This Week in Literary News”
A huge congratulations to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Her novel, The Discomfort of Evening (translated by Michele Hutchison) was the winner of this year’s Booker Prize. It’s always exciting to see a work in translation win honors (especially during Women in Translation Month!). The role of the translator in bringing the shapes and nuances of an author’s words to another language can’t be understated. Over at the Los Angles Review of Books, there’s a great interview with Mustafa Çevikdoğan and Mehmet Erte, both writers and editors from Turkey. Their conversation touches on the publishing landscape in Istanbul, including the large number of translations available in the country: “Our market is saturated with translations, amounting to almost half of the books released. From Chinese to Norwegian to African languages, a wide range of world literature is translated into Turkish.” One of the titles that has recently been translated to Turkish is a familiar one for us at Catalyst— Dark Traces by Martin Steyn.
Also at Los Angles Review, a. great essay by Hope Wabuke on the frameworks of Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, two genres that, in their own ways, “center Blackness, while engaging with the ability of science fiction and fantasy to speak about the oppression of marginalized individuals.” A fascinating look at the past, present, and future of Black speculative literature. Along those lines, there’s an interview at LitHub on one of our most speculative fiction authors, Octavia Butler. Aaron Robertson talks with illustrator James Ransome who illustrated a special edition of Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred.
Let’s move from speculative fiction to the other end of the scale: non-fiction. Emma Copley Eisenberg writes in Esquire about the process of fact-checking non-fiction books, including her own. From her piece: “When I set out to write my first book, I wanted to write a book that examined the very nature of facts and how we turn them into stories. To do this, I knew, I would have to get every fact that was verifiable correct. The more you want to ask the big, shifty questions, the more your foundation must be rock solid.” Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of August 23”
