Karina Uncategorized

Of Canapés and Tricky Questions

Cathy Park Kelly's avatarCathy Park Kelly

(Photo by Karina Szczurek,
Karavan Press)

In the years that I’ve been working on my memoir, there were many moments when I’d slump down after an uninspiring writing session, and question what I was doing. Joel would hug me and say: Let’s talk about your book launch.

Then we’d spend a few pleasant moments talking about where it would be, who would be there and what canapés (or knaps, as Joel calls them) would be served. Because the work as a writer and a memoirist of excavating the past for treasure can be lonely and often grubby, sometimes you have to borrow energy from future possibilities.

And finally, this future dream became a reality. Instead of a book store though, it took place in the cosy The Alma Café (usually a live music venue) surrounded by collections of old tins and music posters. (I would’ve been mightily tempted to break…

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Karina Author, Book

Boiling a Frog Slowly launched at the Alma Café

There are certain books one wishes would never have to be written, but because our reality is what it is, we can only be grateful to authors like Cathy Park Kelly for facing the darkest corners of our existence and exposing them to the light of understanding and healing. Cathy’s wrenchingly honest and powerful memoir about the abuse she suffered at the hands of a partner, Boiling a Frog Slowly, was launched at The Alma Café last night. The launch was postponed in December because of the fourth wave, but it could finally happen. Family, friends, authors, readers and the resident cat gather at the wonderful venue and celebrated Cathy and her empowering book with Alma’s legendary Cornish pasties and lemon meringue pies. Cathy was in conversation with local writer and editor, Máire Fisher. It was a beautiful evening and once again I applaud Cathy’s courage in bringing this book into the world.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and mountains of gratitude to The Folks at the café for making their space available for literary events and always making us feel so warmly welcomed.

Karina Author, Book

Melissa Sussens to publish her debut collection of poetry with Karavan Press

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Melissa Sussens will be publishing her superbly crafted debut poetry collection, Slaughterhouse, with Karavan Press later this year. I have been reading Melissa’s poetry across literary magazines and the web for about two years now and it has always moved and inspired me. It will be a joy to share it with readers in book form. Poetry lovers are in for a true literary treat!

Melissa Sussens is a queer veterinarian and poet. Her work has appeared in Stanzas Poetry Magazine, SFWP Quarterly and Isele Magazine, among many others. She has performed at the Poetry In McGregor festival, Off The Wall and The Red Wheelbarrow where she also hosts poetry readings. Melissa placed 2nd in the New Contrast National Poetry Prize and was amongst the winners of the ClemenGold Writing Competition in 2020. She was selected for the Poetry for Human Rights anthology, Between the Silence, in 2021 and has been nominated for Best of the Net. By day she works as a small animal veterinarian and whenever she’s not doctoring animals, she can be found immersed in writing, editing, or reading poems. Melissa lives in Cape Town with her fiancée and their two dogs. Find her on Instagram and Twitter @melissasussens.

Karina Author, Book, Event

Karavan Press authors at the Adam Small Fees

Cathy Park Kelly, Nancy Richards and Karen Jennings will be participating in the Adam Small Literary Festival in Pniel this year. 

SATURDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2022 
PNIEL MUSEUM TEETUIN

13.45 – 14.15: Cathy Park – Boiling a Frog Slowly: A Memoir of Love Gone Wrong
14.15 – 14.45: Nancy Richards – The Skipper's Daughter
14.45 – 15.15: Karen Jennings – An Island: Longlisted for Booker Prize

Adam Small Fees

Karina Author, Book, Distribution, Interview

SA Jewish Report: ‘Dov Fedler’s Gagman makes its deadline’ by Peta Krost Maunder

When acclaimed veteran South African cartoonist Dov Fedler celebrated his 82nd birthday recently, he received a gift of the first copy of a book he had spent 35 years working on.

Titled Gagman, the book isn’t full of political and satirical cartoons as one would expect from Fedler, but a Holocaust story with a difference.

The book was conceived in 1985 when, said Fedler, “the story just jumped into my head” and he sat down and “wrote it in a flash”. The story is about a comedian in a concentration camp who survives by entertaining the commandant. “He would give his soul for a new joke,” said Fedler. “He knew that the moment he was no longer entertaining, he would die.”

Fedler said it took him until 1995 to understand where his idea had come from. “I was living on deadlines and every single day, I had to produce a cartoon and it had to be funny. If you break down the word deadline, you have dead and line. So, the story was a metaphor for myself times a thousand. It was me telling history and my story in a way.”

He revealed this recently in a video conversation with his daughter, Joanne, an accomplished author in her own right, and Lewis Levin, a family friend and the architect of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Museum.

“I felt like I grew up with Gagman,” Joanne said. “I remember my dad talking about him when I was a teenager and early adult. I remember writing a poem about him when my dad was 54, and now I’m 54.”

The project went on for many years and took on many iterations. “It wasn’t just the writing of the book but the many illustrations that took time, and it got to a point where it felt like the project was never going to come to fruition,” said Joanne.

Fedler battled to tell a story about someone who had lived through the camps, which wasn’t his own experience. However, the Holocaust certainly played a role in his life.

South African Jewish Report

Continue reading: South African Jewish Report

Karina Author, Book, Review

Joanne Hichens reviews BOILING A FROG SLOWLY by Cathy Park Kelly for the Sunday Times

‘Boiling a Frog Slowly’ is an intensely personal memoir about escaping abuse

Cathy Park Kelly’s compelling and painstakingly honest book describes the insidiousness of abuse and how hard it is to leave a toxic and violent relationship

Boiling a Frog Slowly is a courageous, emotionally sincere exposé of a romantic relationship that slides into increasingly disdainful and abusive territory, when love indeed goes wrong. It’s about how terribly difficult it is, as a woman, to extricate oneself from a toxic, manipulative relationship in which one is treated with violence and contempt.

Right from the opening scene, which describes violence so extreme that I caught my breath, I was hooked and wanted to know how this could have happened to a woman I know — albeit on the periphery — as professional, caring and compassionate. What led to the point where Cathy was held down by her partner, as he scrawled the words slut, whore and c**t across her breasts with a red Koki pen?

Continue reading: Sunday Times

Karina Author, Book, Interview

Joanne Hichens interviews Cathy Park Kelly about her memoir, Boiling a Frog Slowly

Boiling a frog slowly is a courageous exposé of a romantic relationship that slides into increasingly disdainful and abusive territory, when love indeed goes wrong. In this interview, Joanne Hichens chats with Cathy Park Kelly about her experiences and the writing of her memoir.

Boiling a frog slowly, a memoir of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of an early lover and partner, is searing in its honesty. Your story shows how terribly difficult it can be for a woman to extricate herself from a relationship in which she is treated with violence and contempt. What prompted you to write your account of abuse at the hands of your male partner?

It’s what I do – I use my writing to explore my life and pick out threads that shine with truth for me. What I have learned, and what I am coming to trust, as I write more and share my writing more, is that these threads are universal. They are present in many human stories. When it comes to the story of the abusive relationship, I wanted to do two things: make sense of this experience for my own sake, and also make something out of this chapter in my life that I could share with others.

On the first, personal level, I used my writing to make sense of this chapter and to crack through the disbelief I was left with, to dig beneath the feeling of “What the f*ck?” to get at the truth of what it meant. I was weirdly fascinated, as well as confounded, by what I had gone through, so I used my writing to create some sense of order and understanding.

But, on the more universal level, I was driven to write this for the unknown reader out there. I felt that I had learned much and gained many insights, and this hard-earned knowledge burned inside me. It felt alive, like it wanted to be given a voice …

LitNet

Interview with Cathy Park Kelly, author of Boiling a frog slowly

Karina Author, Book, Interview, Review

‘Reading Romance: Melissa Volker’s twisty love stories with an environmental agenda’ by Joy Watson

Daily Maverick

… Volker’s tales are carefully spun, a weave of gossamer thread of the finest ilk. Her books take a while to write and she has an uncanny ability to transpose the reader into time and place. 

In A Fractured Land, we are able to visualise the arid landscape, the sweat of hot nights is tangible, and we can smell the lingering scent of wisteria on dry, balmy days. Volker is adept at breathing life into the South African landscape, making it jump off the page to embed itself in the reader’s mind. 

“Quite a lot of work goes into my books,” says Volker. “I have been working on my current novel for about three years. I’m quite fussy. I try hard to layer the characters, to make the dialogue work. I feel like each novel is taking longer – maybe I’ve become a harsher critic of my own work, or maybe I am learning the craft of writing more.” 

The time that Volker invests in her writing is evident in her other books, Shadow Flicker (released in 2019) and The Pool Guy, a novella published in 2021. Attention to detail sets her work aside from other books in the genre, where some writers have managed to push out many books in a short time. 

Volker’s writing stands out in its meticulous effort to cobble together a love story that is complex, exquisitely told and of a high calibre. 

What also sets Volker apart is that both A Fractured Land and Shadow Flicker skillfully incorporate an attempt to pluck at the strings of environmental consciousness. 

“I write about the environment because it’s an issue of concern to me. When writing the books, I thought about some of the social circles that I am in where these issues don’t even touch ground. I realised that one way of getting people to think about it is through fiction. 

“Sometimes people are just so fatigued about bad news and watching it on TV. So I wanted to package it in a way that was palatable… in a way that raises awareness.”  

…

Daily Maverick