The Smell of Blood and Other Stories is the product of a years-long conversation between Caitlin Stobie and Kharys Ateh Laue about feminism, power, and narrative positioning. The stories follow the lives of mothers, daughters, schoolgirls, and sisters soon after the 1994 democratic elections, tracing their coming of age as women in post-apartheid South Africa. Voices in this collection flit in and out of focus as they navigate the everyday violence surrounding them. Together, they create a short story cycle that reflects on both privilege and trauma, on cherished memories and shame.
ISBN: 978-1-0672224-7-5
Publication date: September 2024
Caitlin StobieKharys Ateh Laue
CAITLIN STOBIE is an author of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. Her writing has won the Douglas Livingstone Creative Writing Competition, the Heather Drummond Memorial Prize for Poetry, and an Authors’ Foundation Award. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds.
KHARYS ATEH LAUE is a writer and editor based in Cape Town. She is the author of Sketches, and has written for various literary journals, such as Pleiades, Isele Magazine, Brittle Paper. She is an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Western Cape.
CAITLIN STOBIE is an author of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. Her writing has won the Douglas Livingstone Creative Writing Competition, the Heather Drummond Memorial Prize for Poetry, and an Authors’ Foundation Award. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds. She is the co-author (with Kharys Ateh Laue) of The Smell of Blood, a short story collection published by Karavan Press.
KHARYS ATEH LAUE is a writer and editor based in Cape Town. She is the author of Sketches, and has written for various literary journals, such as Pleiades, Isele Magazine, Brittle Paper. She is an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Western Cape. She is the co-author (with Caitlin Stobie) of The Smell of Blood, a short story collection published by Karavan Press.
“Can we truly celebrate 30 years of democracy when so many women and children are still prevented from freely and fairly exercising their right to democracy, freedom, equality and above all, humanity?” These words from Marlene le Roux, CEO of Artscape the Theatre Centre, sum up the thinking behind this year’s Artscape Women’s Humanity Festival (AWHF), planned in association with Woman Zone for Women’s Month. — LitNet
Together with the AWHF and Woman Zone, we will be launching Thobeka Yose‘s inspirational memoir, In Silence My Heart Speaks, during the AWHF. Thobeka will be in conversation with Nancy Richards, who has accompanied Thobeka on her writing journey from the beginning and who wrote a beautiful foreword to the book:
Writing your own story, I imagine, must be like running barefoot. Whatever the ground texture, you are going to feel it intensely. But you have to finish. At the end of her ‘run’, I suspect, Thobeka Yose may have had sore soles, not only from reliving her own story, but that of her mother. Neither of them easy journeys. When I first met Thobeka at a group workshop with Ntsiki Sigege at the Artscape Resource Centre back in 2016, she, like everyone else, shared a bit about herself. It was clear she’d introspected long and hard on her situation. But instead of shying away from the issues, she’d obviously decided to confront and interrogate them, both from her own perspective and those of others whose actions had had such impact on her. I suggested she write it down as a way, perhaps, of making sense of it and getting it off her chest. The workshop over, richer for the shared experiences, we all went our separate ways. A few short months later, I was amazed to get an email from Thobeka saying, ‘I took your advice and wrote! My manuscript is with a publisher as we speak.’ …
It is truly special for us to be launching this stunning book at Artscape and with Woman Zone – spaces that nurture and support women’s creativity and make dreams come true. And how fitting that it is during August and the AWHF. Please join us for this wonderful occasion on Saturday, 17 August, at 10:30 a.m.
I show my scars now with pride because I survived. This is me owning my story, all of it, the good and the bad.
A searing and brave memoir chronicling the author’s resilience, compassion and growth as she moves from a childhood of trauma, through the challenges of dealing with the early loss of her beloved husband and becoming a single parent as well as subsequently accompanying her child on a difficult journey of self-discovery, to a life of acceptance and forgiveness. Thobeka Yose confronts the taboos surrounding mental health, abuse, betrayal and sexual identity with fearless honesty, kindness and understanding that will inspire countless others.
Kerry Hammerton and Athambile Masola will be reading to us at The Commons in Muizenberg on Wednesday, 7th August.
Kerry Hammerton lives in Cape Town, South Arica and has an MA in Creative Writing. She has published poetry and prose in various South African and international literary journals and anthologies – including Living While Feminist (Kwela Books, 2020), The Only Magic We Know (Modjaji Books, 2020) and Tiger (Karavan Press, 2023). Her fourth poetry collection, afterwards, was published in 2023 (Karavan Press). Kerry is a freelance tutor and supervisor for the Rhodes School of Literature and Language on their Masters in Creative Writing programme. You can find her on Instagram: kerry_hammerton
Athambile Masola is a writer, researcher and an award-winning poet based in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her debut collection of poetry is written in isiXhosa, Ilifa (Uhlanga Press, 2021). She is the co-author of the children’s history book series, Imbokodo: Women who shape us (Jacana Media, 2022), with Dr Xolisa Guzula. Her latest book is a collaboration with Makhosazana Xaba; a collection of Noni Jabavu’s columns from 1977, A stranger at Home (Tafelberg, 2023).
As always, the reading by the featured poet(s) 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.
We are very excited to welcome this extraordinary debut collection into the world: Land | Lines by Shari Daya. The first time Shari read from it before publication was at Salon Hecate during the Books on the Bay Festival earlier this year, and so it is only fitting to launch the actual book at Salon Hecate’s home, the wonderful Noordhoek Art Point Gallery, where all the arts meet and mingle, during the next Salon which will be taking place on Tuesday, 6 August.
Join us in a celebration of this exquisite poetry collection and the beauty of the space that is Noordhoek Art Point’s Salon Hecate!
It was a bittersweet evening, a celebration and a longing. When C. J. (Jonty) Driver passed away last year, he left behind a memoir, which his friend and brother-in-law, J. M. Coetzee, edited and wrote the Foreword to. Nick Mulgrew at uHlanga Press and I at Karavan Press had the privilege of co-publishing Dayspring, and we launched it this week at Clarke’s Bookshop.
Two family friends, Maeder Osler (who features prominently in the book and could speak to the recalled memories) and David Attwell (who knew Jonty and has always admired his work), were in conversation about the memoir and invited questions and comments from the audience, which filled the bookshop to the brim.
I would like to thank everyone involved in bringing this book to life and in launching it! It is a pleasure to be able to share Dayspring with readers. The book includes six of Jonty’s poems selected by J. M. Coetzee, photographs and a deeply moving Afterword by Jonty’s children, Tamlyn, Dax and Dominic Driver.
Dayspring is a recollection of Driver’s South African youth – his childhood as a reverend’s son in Kroonstad and Grahamstown-Makhanda preceding his extraordinary student years at the University of Cape Town, during which he edited the student newspaper Varsity and became enmeshed in radical student politics.
As president of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students, Driver was detained by the security police, tortured and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Cape Town. Even after fleeing to England, Driver remained a bête-noire for the apartheid authorities, with ex-president B. J. Vorster keeping personal notes on Driver’s activities.
But all that comes later in his life. Dayspring is a tender and deeply personal book, offering an intimate picture of a family coming to terms with the losses of the Second World War. It is the story of a father and son recognising their differing beliefs, and of a young man navigating the joys and pitfalls of romance. As a direct descendant of the 1820 Settlers, Driver examines the contradictory beliefs and institutions of the South Africa he grew up in – particularly its boarding schools – with unique insight and humour.
Throughout the reader discovers the moments of inspiration, failure and literary exchange that were crucial to the development of Driver’s fiction, celebrated internationally during his lifetime, as well as his poetry, which, even before his death in 2023, has been lauded as one of the most significant bodies of work by a modern South African poet.
In Dayspring, we are witness to the formation of a sensitive, incisive intellect; someone who did not simply engage with the world through literature, but faced up to it, too. This is an extraordinary book.
karavanpress.com 