Karina Author, Book, Event

Dawn Garisch reading at The Red Wheelbarrow

Dawn Garisch will be The Red Wheelbarrow’s featured poet on Zoom this week.

Dawn Garisch is a medical doctor and award-winning author and poet. She has had seven novels, three poetry collections, a non-fiction work, a short story collection, two children’s books and memoir published. Four novels were published in the UK, including Breaking Milk (Heloise Press, 2024), also short-listed for the CNA Sunday Times award in South Africa (2021). Her short story collection What Remains (Karavan, 2023) won the NIHSS and the Nadine Gordimer SALA awards in 2024 in that category. She has had four plays and a short film, Cry Me A Baby, produced, and has written scripts for the TV edudrama Soul City. Her poem Blood Delta won the DALRO prize in 2007, Miracle won the Sol Plaatjie EU competition in 2011, and the collection Difficult Gifts (Modjaji, 2011) was shortlisted for the Ingrid Jonker Prize.

As always, the reading by the featured poet will be followed by an open mic session for poets from the audience. Poets are welcome to read from their own work as well as from the work of a favourite poet.

Join: Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 813 6429 6708

Passcode: poetry

Date: 29 October 2026

Time: 19:30 SAST

For more info, including the link to The Red Wheelbarrow’s complete poetry archive, visit their website. Recordings of the weekly Zoom readings are on their YouTube channel.

Karina Author, Book, Festival

Karavan Press & Indeed Books at the 2026 BookBedonnerd Literary Festival in Richmond

The Karavan is heading to Richmond this week where we will be participating in the BookBedonnerd Literary Festival, taking place between 29 and 31 October 2026, one of the highlights of the literary calendar every year.

Catch the following Karavan Press and Indeed Books authors at the festival:

Thursday 29th October – Day 1

09:30 STEPHEN SYMONS – SATRLORN

Friday 30th October – Day 2

10:00 ANGIE BUTLER – THE SHADOW OF ELSEWHERE

15:00 GAIL GILBRIDE – AN UNSUITABLE WOMAN

15:40 TRACY GOING – THE POWER OF WRITING & STORYTELLING

16:45 ROGER LUCEY – HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS

Saturday 31st October – Day 3

10:00 SHERYL & SANDY JAMES – UNBRIDLING

We will also be running three writing workshops at the Vetmuis Plaaskombuis, every morning between 8 and 9AM:

THURSDAY: Karina M. Szczurek

FRIDAY: Kerry Hammerton

SATURDAY: Chantal Stewart

Join us for this wonderful Karoo adventure!

Karina Author, Book, Event

Poems Galore at Salon Hecate, 3 November 2026

Please join us at Salon Hecate, Noordhoek Art Point Gallery, to celebrate four recently published poetry collections – Nothing Is Lost, Fishwife, Memories In Our Throats and Gathered Seams – on 3 November, 5.30 for 6PM. We will read and discuss and have a glass of bubbly to toast Kerry Hammerton, Diane Awerbuck and all the poets of Memories In Our Throats edited by Melissa Sussens and Gathered Seams published by Modjaji Books.

Click here for more details: Salon Hecate at Noordhoek Art Point

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: In Other Stories 2026 edited by Kerry Hammerton

IN OTHER STORIES 2026
AN ANTHOLOGY OF FLASH FICTION AND NON-FICTION
Edited by Kerry Hammerton

‘I wanted to include at least twenty-six flashes (to match the year) and ended up accepting twenty-seven. It was a delight to discover a variety of surprising and interesting stories in the submissions. A flash about a writer contemplating their own funeral, one about the demise of Trump, others on the topics of cancer and beloved trees being felled. There are erotic stories and stories about marital sex, baboon encounters, knitting, historical reflections, neighbours and the patriarchy.’
— Kerry Hammerton

Contributors

Soline Lippe de Thoisy | Margot Saffer | Michelle A. Meyer | Nontobeko Mtshali | Chumisa Ndakisa | Stephen Devereux | Eduard Burle | Claude Naudé | Karina M. Szczurek | Chantal Stewart | Tiah Marie Beautement | Kim Hasert | Kerry Hammerton | Liesl Jobson | Sarah Buchner | Mthobisi Myeni | Lee-Anne Gaertner | Karen Jennings | Siphosethu Siwaphiwe Zazela | Stephen Symons | Gabrielle Mudiwa | Gina Kukard | Olwanda Saphokazi Majozi | Busisiwe Mahlangu | Nadia Kamies | Tiisetso Tlelima | Anne Schlebusch

Publication date: November 2026

ISBN: 978-1-0671781-9-2

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Starlorn by Stephen Symons

but death always sharpens back
into focus on waking—
that incessant tidal wash
of remembering and forgetting

STARLORN traverses the North African campaign of World War II and post-war apartheid South Africa as it follows the unlikely bond between an irreverent Luftwaffe fighter pilot, Hans Müller, and a black South African prisoner of war, Jacob Makwetu. Spanning decades and continents, Starlorn is a mediation on how their relationship becomes intertwined in ways that skirt life and death, divisions of race, ideology and navigating the aftermath of war.

ISBN 978-1-0671781-1-6

Publication date: November 2026

Stephen Symons was born in Cape Town in 1966. He has published award-winning poetry and short fiction in local and international journals, magazines, and anthologies, and he has authored five poetry collections and two collections of short stories. Symons holds a PhD in History (University of Pretoria) and an MA in Creative Writing (University of Cape Town). He was shortlisted for the 2015 Hudson Prize for Poetry (USA), the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, 2017 Ingrid Jonker Prize, and 2023 South African Literary Awards. He won the Red Wheelbarrow Prize for Poetry in 2022. His fifth collection, The Algebra of Insignificance, was published by Karavan Press in 2024 and won the Olive Schreiner Prize for poetry in 2026. He lives with his family in Oranjezicht, Cape Town, where he runs a graphic design studio. Starlorn is his debut novel.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: The Shadow of Elsewhere by Angie Butler

The Shadow of Elsewhere: A Journey Home is a tender yet unsparing account of two women, their lives interwoven by one woman’s yearning for Africa and the other’s attempt to escape it.

Thandiwe Sebata was born in Zimbabwe and died alone in an Oxfordshire hospital. Broken by her country, she jumps the border into South Africa and becomes stateless, stripped of identity and hounded by authorities. An unlikely bond forms between her and Angie Butler who is visiting her mother country. Angie’s gesture of goodwill turns Thandiwe’s life into a horrific ordeal of displacement in England, history repeating itself. The Shadow of Elsewhere tells of an impossible fight for justice. It uncovers what it is to be caught between borders, with little chance to hide in no man’s land. And yet, from the dark shadows, light and love outpace the loss in the quest to find home. With all its agonies, Africa calls the two women back, and bewitched, they return, if by no other means, as phantoms, as ghosts.

This story needs to be told, not because it is comfortable, but because it is true. Too many women have suffered in silence, carrying stories the world never hears. Thandiwe’s voice may now be silent, but her words still speak. We owe it to her, and to countless women whose stories remain untold, not to allow fear or shame to bury the truth. Her telling is an act of remembrance, it is an act of courage. Let her story be told.–Zulu Nkululeko

We have to do everything we can to amplify Thandiwe’s voice. We owe it to her to break the silence.–Thenjiwe Kona

Publication date: November 2026
ISBN: 978-1-0671781-7-8

About the author

ANGIE BUTLER was born and raised in Johannesburg, where she worked in film and theatre before moving to London in her mid-twenties. She attained a degree in Sculpture at the City & Guilds of London Art School. She is the author of several books on polar history, including Ice Tracks – Today’s Heroic Age of Polar Adventure, The Quest for Frank Wild, which was turned into a BBC documentary, and co-author of Shackleton’s Critic. Her passion for Antarctica led her to co-founding the expedition travel company Ice Tracks Expeditions and she spent seventeen years travelling to the Arctic and Antarctica. She married the late Royal Academician sculptor James Butler and they have five daughters between them. She lives in England, returning to South Africa several times a year. When she is not writing, she is in her studio in East Sussex. The Shadow of Elsewhere is based on a true story.

Karina Author

Author: Angie Butler

ANGIE BUTLER was born and raised in Johannesburg, where she worked in film and theatre before moving to London in her mid-twenties. She attained a degree in Sculpture at the City & Guilds of London Art School. She is the author of several books on polar history, including Ice Tracks – Today’s Heroic Age of Polar Adventure, The Quest for Frank Wild, which was turned into a BBC documentary, and co-author of Shackleton’s Critic. Her passion for Antarctica led her to co-founding the expedition travel company Ice Tracks Expeditions and she spent seventeen years travelling to the Arctic and Antarctica. She married the late Royal Academician sculptor James Butler and they have five daughters between them. She lives in England, returning to South Africa several times a year. When she is not writing, she is in her studio in East Sussex. The Shadow of Elsewhere is based on a true story.