Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Everyone Dies by Frankie Murrey

I consider all the words I have access to and finally write ‘help’ and slip it under the door of the empty room, along with a blank page and a pen.

EVERYONE DIES

A SERIES

by FRANKIE MURREY

Late at night, I count down from the scar in my memory to where I am now, to where I will one day be. Four months today. In another six years and eight months, no part of me will have touched any part of you. And then I think, I will be fully recovered. Re-covered. Sometimes while I count, I cry. Very briefly. It means nothing.

Publication date: 8 September 2023

ISBN: 978-1-7764581-3-4

FRANKIE MURREY worked in the book retail sector for many years before becoming the coordinator of Open Book Festival, which takes place every year in early September in Cape Town. In 2015, her work was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She resigned from Open Book Festival at the end of 2019 and started her own company, FM Project Management. Through this company, she has since been curating or managing creative events and projects that align with her interests. She also returned to Open Book in 2022, a space she’d missed intensely. Everyone Dies is her authorial debut.

Karina Author

Author: Frankie Murrey

FRANKIE MURREY worked in the book retail sector for many years before becoming the coordinator of Open Book Festival, which takes place every year in early September in Cape Town. In 2015, her work was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She resigned from Open Book Festival at the end of 2019 and started her own company, FM Project Management. Through this company, she has since been curating or managing creative events and projects that align with her interests. She also returned to Open Book in 2022, a space she’d missed intensely. She won the HSS Award for Best Emerging Author in the Fiction Category for her authorial debut, Everyone Dies, in 2024. A Collection of Gaps is her second volume of stories. 

Karina Uncategorized

Author: Diane Awerbuck

DIANE AWERBUCK is a prizewinning writer, reviewer, editor and teacher. She writes femme/goth thrillers (Home Remedies); memoirs (Gardening at Night); pandemic cowboy thrillers (South, as Frank Owen; North, as Frank Owen); doctorates on trauma (The Spirit and the Letter); holy-wholly poetry (As above, so below); and short story collections (Cabin Fever; Inside your body there are flowers). She hopes you are sitting comfortably.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Inside your body there are flowers by Diane Awerbuck

What do I know? 
I know white people. I know loss. I know arrogance and disaster, natural and unnatural. I know the mythical sometimes crosses in and descends on us in our extremity like heat mist, like haze.  
Let me write my story about the man Malan, who is contracted to build a dam in Zimbabwe. 
Let me write about the collapse of our projects, of our expectations and desires, and about the things that are given to us in their place. The gifts of suffering. The gifts of apocalypse. Let me write about his little boy who died before him, about mermaids and sour worms and the great snake, Nehushtan, about all the creatures who crowd around us unseen on the earth. 
All you red-faced men of my youth, with your moustaches and your beer boeps and your vulnerable eyes: here is your story.

“Mesmerising, at times shocking, and teeming with honesty, wit, razor-sharp prose and gasp-inducing insights, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the finest and bravest collection of short stories I’ve ever read.” – Sarah Lotz

Publication date: 8 September 2023

ISBN: 9-781776-458141

DIANE AWERBUCK is a prizewinning writer, reviewer, editor and teacher. She writes femme/goth thrillers (Home Remedies); memoirs (Gardening at Night); pandemic cowboy thrillers (South, as Frank Owen; North, as Frank Owen); doctorates on trauma (The Spirit and the Letter); holy-wholly poetry (As above, so below); and short story collections (Cabin Fever; Inside your body there are flowers). She hopes you are sitting comfortably.

Karina Author, Book, Prize

THE OTHER ME by JOY WATSON shortlisted for the UJ Debut Prize

Announcement of the UJ Prize Shortlists (Debut Prize and Main Prize) for Works Published in 2022

The University of Johannesburg Prize (UJ Prize) for South African Writing is delighted to announce the shortlist for books published in 2022. The UJ Prize opened for submissions on 25 October 2022 and closed on 31 January 2023.

We received a record number of entries this year, and a panel comprised of seven judges considered the submissions. Following a rigorous adjudication process, the judges have shortlisted the following books in the respective categories:

Debut Prize

  • Boy on the Run (novel) by Welcome Mandla Lishivha
  • The Other Me (novel) by Joy Watson
  • Things My Mother Left Me (novel) by Pulane Mpondo

Main Prize

  • An Angel’s Demise (novel) by Sue Nyathi
  • Greyheart (poetry) by Lesego Rampolokeng
  • How to be a Revolutionary (novel) by C.A. Davids

The panel of judges drawn from three different universities around South Africa, selected these six titles out of more than 100 entries. “The overwhelming response to the prize is indicative of the growth and diversity of South African writing,” said Professor Ronit Frenkel, Chairperson of judges and Head of the English Department at the University of Johannesburg.

The final results will be announced on 14 September 2023.

Congratulations, Joy, and all other shortlisted writers!

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: What Remains by Dawn Garisch

In the beginning there is nothing. Breath stirring a blank sea. Vague shapes beneath the surface. An old blurred bone, a chiselled stone, clues in the midden.

There’s that deep feeling, the yearning, slow burn. Something incomplete or missing insists, lodged like a wedge. Something tugs, aligns, sets you facing a specific direction − discovers a woman lying in a road, another standing beside her dead mother, a man who finds salvation in a bottle, one who feels invincible, risking everything, and one who dies thirty years after an attempt on his life.

The writer traverses the dream, her fingers sleepwalking over the keyboard. Seeking momentary relief, the feeling of completion. Even as the hand lifts to write the first line, there is no clear idea of what will emerge.

Look around. You think we intended this?

Dawn Garisch journeys into the oddities of the human heart with a sharp eye and an edge of dark humour in this new collection. Her stories are vital and particular, her characters almost disturbingly human in their struggles – ageing, lust, loss, alienation – and their flawed relationships with each other and the world. Finely crafted, inventive, and satisfyingly twisty, these stories are a pleasure to read.

– Kate Sidley

Dawn Garisch, author, poet, playwright and medical doctor, writes about human relationships with extraordinary empathy, humour and courage. The twenty stories in this marvellous collection are no exception. Her medical knowledge, adventurous spirit and bold frankness shine through tales about life’s great challenges, from conception to death, while her playwright’s use of dialogue evokes the voices and spirits of her characters. These are stories to savour and treasure.

– Mignonne Breier

ISBN: 978-1-7764581-0-3

Publication date: 17 August 2023

DAWN GARISCH is an author and medical doctor. She is a founding member of the Life Righting Collective (liferighting.com), running writing courses. She has had seven novels, two collections of poetry, short stories, a non-fiction work and a memoir published. She has had five plays and a short film produced, and has written for television. Her poem ‘Blood Delta’ won the DALRO prize (2007); Trespass was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize in Africa (2010); ‘Miracle’ won the EU Sol Plaatje Poetry Award (2011); and ‘What to Do About Ricky’ won the Short.Sharp.Stories competition (2013). Her novel Accident was longlisted for the Barry Ronge Sunday Times Fiction Award (2018), and her novel Breaking Milk was shortlisted for the Sunday Times/CNA Fiction Award (2021) and will be published in the UK by Héloïse Press in 2024. Her second collection of poetry Disturbance came out in 2020. What Remains is her first collection of short stories.

Karina Author, Book, Event, Festival

Lethokuhle Msimang at the Durban International Book Fair, 9-13 August 2023

The Durban International Book Fair is taking place between 9 and 13 August, and Lethokuhle Msimang will be returning to her hometown to speak about The Frightened.

9 August:

12:00-13:00 | Lethokuhle Msimang The Frightened (Alan Paton Stage)

16:00-17:00 | Black women in the arts: challenging the notion of subservience, with Gcina Mhlophe, LethokuhleMsimang and Mbali Malimela (Phyllis Naidoo Stage)

Click here for the full programme: DIBF 2023