Hot from the Press
Happy new year, Catalyst family! After a wonderful holiday season, we are rested and ready for a big year here at the press—with eight (!!) titles in store for you all in 2023. First up are our two January arrivals, Eye Brother Horn and Pearl of the Sea, which you’ll be hearing lots about on our socials leading up to their simultaneous releases on Tuesday, January 31st. We can’t wait to share these amazing books with you.
Until then, here’s a bit of Catalyst news for you to kick off the year! Our two Panel & Page releases for 2023—Pearl of the Sea and KARIBA—were included on this epic line-up of 2023 African creative projects to look out for from Squid Mag, and our two January releases were also included on this January roundup from the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses. Ameera Patel’s Outside the Lines is the African Book Club’s January book club pick and you can register here for their virtual discussion on January 22nd, which Ameera will be attending to answer reader questions. And finally, check out Pearl of the Sea co-author Raffaella Delle Donne in conversation with Ayo Oyeku on Muna Kalati!
In other news…
Filippo Bernardini, the Italian man who posed as an agent and publisher to steal over 1,000 unpublished manuscripts and was arrested by the FBI in early 2022, has pled guilty. A Texas author who supposedly died by suicide in 2020 took to Facebook to alert her fans that she is very much alive. Mike Pompeo blurbed his own book, and despite calls from trans activists to boycott J.K. Rowling, the author still took home 18 million Euros from her publisher last year.
Prince Harry’s memoir is the UK’s fastest selling nonfiction title ever, so I guess that means that weird PR strategy is working? Speaking of weird, someone thought to make an adult coloring book adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us, which is about… yep, domestic abuse.
Here are the three finalists for the 2023 Story Prize, and here are all the literary adaptations you’ve seen the stars of Glass Onion in. A record-setting 129 library systems had over 1 million digital lends in 2022, and the American Dialect Association named “-ussy” the word of the year. Judy Blume’s beloved book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is getting the movie treatment, and we finally have a trailer for Renfield after years of waiting. Less than a week after the completion of the January 6 hearing, a 23-hour audiobook of the proceedings has been released.
#ReadingAfrica roundup
In this section, we’re sharing publishing news, book recs, and more all focused on African and African diaspora authors. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for our seventh annual #ReadingAfrica week, this year Dec 3-9!
Brittle Paper’s 2022 Persons of the Year are: Prof. Kwame Dawes (African Literary Person of the Year), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Writer-Activist of the Year), Prof. Pumla Dineo Gqola (Academic of the Year), Blackbird Books (Publishing House of the Year), Afritondo (Literary Platform of the Year), and Amyn Bawa-Allah (@Lipglossmaffia, Social Media Influencer of the Year). Congrats to all!
From the Backlist
In honor of Outside the Lines being selected as the African Book Club’s January pick, it’s our first 2023 “From the Backlist” feature. Read a Q&A with author Ameera Patel, and don’t forget to register for the African Book Club’s discussion with Ameera in less than two weeks!
Outside the Lines is a journey through the underbelly of Johannesburg, South Africa and the intimacy of family drama scattered across racial, religious, and class divisions. Drug addict Cathleen is kidnapped and her distracted, middle-class family fails to notice her absence; Zilindile, who services Cathleen’s drug habit, and his Muslim Indian girlfriend Farhana, struggle to make sense of their relationship despite their very different backgrounds; and domestic worker Flora and the silent Runyararo, who was painting Cathleen’s house until accused by Cathleen’s father of stealing, become entangled with romance and criminals, leading to the ultimate tragedy. A taut novel that walks the line between family drama, crime novel, thriller, and black comedy.
Ameera Patel is an actor, writer, theatre-maker and poet residing in Johannesburg. She read for a BA in Theatre and Performance at the University of Cape Town in 2005 and in 2013 she received a distinction for her Masters in Creative Writing at Wits University in Johannesburg. Ameera has worked as a performer in both theatre and television, and has written for television and the theatre, notably the play Whistle Stop, which won both a Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award and the PANSA Best New Writer award in 2014 in her home country South Africa. Outside the Lines, Patel’s first novel, was originally published by Modjaji Books and was long-listed for a Barry Ronge Fiction Award in 2017.
Praise for Outside the Lines
“Patel displays an exceptional ability to plumb the depths of her characters, each of whose points of view throws light on the realities of the other narrators. Rays of hope and gentle overtures to love lift this vibrant novel.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
One of “10 Novels You Should Read in June” —CrimeReads
A Publishers Weekly “Books of the Week” pick
“Outside the Lines is a sharp novel that critiques how personal excesses damages those who indulge in it.” —Foreword Reviews
“In this coke-fueled thrill-ride through the underworld of Joburg, characters face difficult decisions and try to find some humanity, even as the quest for money and the need to meet family expectations tear them apart. South Africa is one of the great hot spots for crime fiction these days, and we can’t wait to see more from Ameera Patel.” —CrimeReads (“The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020: Summer Reading Edition”)
“Outside the Lines features as diverse a collection of characters as one could hope to meet. […] This heady mixture of characters meshes to a tense, literary thriller.” — The Big Thrill
