Hot from the Press
Tune in to two Catalyst author chats! This week, Lolo series author and illustrator Niki Daly chatted on South Africa’s CapeTalk radio with Lester Kiewit about his work. Give it a listen, and find out more about the Lolo series here. And mark your calendars for Friday August 12th for the launch of Small Mercies author Bridget Krone’s newest middle-grade book, The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap, hosted in Bridget’s hometown of Hilton, South Africa! If you can’t make it in person (it’s a bit of a long flight from the USA), the event will be livestreamed here at 12pm EST, Friday August 12th.
The week in review
The shortlist for the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize were announced this week, the Center for Fiction announced its longlist for the First Novel Prize, and a new translation prize for South Asian literature was announced. The New York Times has a new books editor, Gillian Flynn is going to murder someone on a cruise, and Barack Obama released his 2022 summer reading list.
July is Disability Pride month, and we’ve been celebrating all month long! Here’s a great reading list to introduce you to disability literature, seven nonfiction audiobooks by disabled authors and fiction audiobooks with disabled protagonists. Get reading!
For thought provoking pieces, Felice Arenas writes about childless woman tropes, Lio Min explores gender and sexuality in anime, Oscar Hokeah chronicles Native American lives, and Helen Kapstein reports on what Americans can learn from South Africa’s Apartheid-era book banning. Jonny Diamond shared his thoughts on BookToken, the new NFT system for ebooks, and CNN investigates Joyce Carol Oates’ claims on Twitter that young white men are being “shut out” of publishing [Editor’s note: LOL, JCO]
#ReadingAfrica roundup
In this section, we share publishing news, book recs, and more all focused on African and African diaspora authors. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for our sixth annual #ReadingAfrica week, this year Dec 4-10!
Awards news galore! Two writers of African descent, Saddiq Dzukogi and Lorna Goodison, were included on the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry shortlist, and four writers of African descent were named finalists for the 2022 World Fantasy Awards (you can check out the full list of winners here). Eloghosa Osunde and Tara M. Stringfellow were included on Waterstones’ inaugural debut fiction prize shortlist, and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, author of Ace of Spades, was longlisted for the 2022 Polari Prize in the UK. And finally, three authors of African descent were included on the Booker Prize longlist! Check out the full Booker longlist here.
Also this week, Brittle Paper announced free writing masterclasses featuring top African writers, and the African Poetry Book Fund received a major grant to study poetry distribution in Africa.
