Hot from the Press
We’re so excited to have officially launched our GlobalComix page last week! GlobalComix is a platform for comics readers and creatives anywhere in the world to discover, read and publish comics and graphic novels online. You can check out our publisher page to read all of our graphic novels from your phone or computer, and be sure to give us a follow to be the first to access our upcoming releases!
Get out your calendars, because our authors have some amazing events coming up! This coming Tuesday March 29 at 6:30pm Pacific Time, Catalyst authors Richard Conyngham (All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa – A Graphic History) and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (The History of Man) will be appearing at PubWest Live, a virtual event hosted by PubWest and Massy Arts. The event also features Christopher Chávez, author of The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public. Register here!
And on April 5 at 7pm Pacific Time, join author Caroline Kurtz for a livestreamed reading and discussion of her new book Today is Tomorrow with Annie Bloom’s Books–and get a signed copy if you pre-order from Annie Bloom’s!
Awards news, movie trailers… and thanks, Ted Cruz!
In awards news, the British Book Awards and Dublin Literary Award shortlists were announced this week. Colm Tolbin’s The Magician took home the Rathbones Folio Prize, and Lauren Hough’s Lambda Literary Prize nomination was rescinded after a tweet accused of being transphobic.
Delia Owen’s mega-hit Where the Crawdads Sing got its first movie trailer, Drake put out a recommended reading list which had some ~surprising~ picks, and Ted Cruz made headlines this week by butchering the messages behind two anti-racist books duing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate hearing, accidentally making both books bestsellers on Amazon. (And for those who haven’t read these wonderful books, here’s a look at what they really say.)
An editor’s sudden resignation at the top of her game is reviving the debate on junior pay in the publishing industry, and a librarian argues for the reappraisal of public librarianship as a high-risk job.
Reading rec roundup
Check out the best audiobooks for road trips, YA books with trans main characters, and 8 stories about identity set in Antarctica. The Guardian recommends books for understanding the Ukraine invasion, and The New York Times makes a reading list for books from black authors before Brown v. Board of Education. And finally, your literary companion for the Oscars this weekend.
The week in #ReadingAfrica
News from African and African diaspora authors, all year long. Don’t forget to mark your calendar for this year’s #ReadingAfrica week, December 4-10!
Ghanian-born fashion editor/icon Edward Enninful is releasing a memoir, and British-Somali poet Warsan Shire’s debut collection dropped this month–you can read her Vogue interview here. NoViolet Bulawayo discusses intersectional feminism, Zimbabwe after Mugabe, and Animal Farm, and Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah discusses exile, writing in English, and the rise of African writers in a post-colonial era.
From the Backlist
If you loved the short stories in Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa, check out this amazing collection of stories from Somalia.
The Lion’s Binding Oath by Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
Religious and ethnic conflict may be the Horn of Africa’s most enduring recent legacy. But beneath its recent history of war and displacement lies human stories—families, clans, lovers, neighbors, and friends, all bound together through common cultural, religious, and historical ties.
Ahmed Ismail Yusuf’s collection of short stories introduces readers to the people of Somalia and their struggles: their faith, identity, friendship, and family bonds, as whispers of war grow louder around them. Through stories that span the years before and during Somalia’s civil war, Yusuf weaves together Somalia’s political, social, and religious conflicts with portrayals of the country’s love of poetry, music, and soccer. A powerful examination of love and resilience in a country torn apart by war, written with deep compassion for the lives of its characters.
