Tag: Yewande Omotoso

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

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

Outside the Lines

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!

Bom Boy

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.

This Week in Literary News

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.

 

Want to lend a helping hand in your community? On Electric Lit, this article shows you how teaming up with NYC Books Through Bars can help deliver books to local prisoners.

Brittle Paper has information about book reviewers for Publisher’s Weekly. They are calling for book reviewers, an opportunity for more diversity within the publishing industry.

Also on Brittle Paper, an article about the 2020 London School of Economics’ LSE Shape The World festival and this year’s inclusion of a panel centered around “African Talks: The Global Legacy of African Women Writers”.

Over on New Internationalist, our own Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy), writes about navigating through Johannesburg without a car, and finding a new perspective in the city.

OkayAfrica has an article and video on Samba Yonga’s TED Talk where she discusses the need to create superheroes for and from Africa.

SacrificedThere is an excerpt from one of our releases, Sacrificed by Chanette Paul and translated to English by Elsa Silke, over on The Johannesburg Review of Books.

The New York Times has an article about stories of the female trio and explores how this trope is so effective in literature and outside of it.

The Carnegie Medal longlist for 2020 gives us many retellings of classic literature such as Moby Dick and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but with a twist. Check out this article at The Guardian, and take a look at the reimagining of these books.

Lastly in more Catalyst news, Shaka Rising by Luke Molver is on sale for 50% off! Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity as it ends in February.

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”

Women in Translation Month 2018

It’s that time of year again! Welcome to Women in Translation Month everyone! This is a great time to broaden your reading horizons by adding translated works by women authors and translators to your ‘to read’ stacks! We’ll be doing our part this month with giveaways, interviews, sales, and more! Stay tuned….

If you want to get reading now, we’re offering special prices on all of our titles all summer, but we have a few we want to spotlight:

SacrificedFirst up, Sacrificed by Chanette Paul (translated by Elsa Silke) sends readers on a global journey from South Africa to Belgium as Caz Colijn searches for answers about her mysterious past. Sacrificed is on sale now.

And next, if you want to add even more women to your reading list, check out our special Women’s Voices bundle, which features Sacrificed, short story collection Love Interrupted by Reneilwe Malatji, We Kiss Them with Rain by Futhi Ntshingila (Futhi just recently finished an isiZulu translation of her novel!), and a sneak preview of Bom Boy by Yewande Omotoso, which is out in January.

Follow us @catalyst_press on Twitter and @catalystpress on Instagram to keep up with our #WiTMonth fun, and be sure to tag us if you’re reading one of our titles this month! And click here to read all of our WitMonth posts.

Continue reading “Women in Translation Month 2018”