In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose – officially: Queen Thobeka – was launched at Woman Zone as part of the Artscape Women’s Humanity Festival yesterday. Thobeka was in conversation with Nancy Richards, who has been a champion of Thobeka’s memoir from the start when she first met this courageous woman and heard her remarkable story.
Yesterday’s launch interview was followed by a deeply moving Q&A during which other women praised Thobeka, her book, and shared their own stories of becoming, resilience and power. It was an honour to be present and to listen. We all went away inspired.
Thank you, Queen Thobeka, for your strength, wisdom and willingness to be vulnerable and to open up spaces for vital conversations. Thank you to Nancy for all the encouragement and support, and for leading the conversation. To Woman Zone – deepest gratitude for championing women’s lives & stories. And to Artscape for hosting. Thank you to all who attended and made this occasion beyond special!
Note Thobeka’s shoes! Definitely the most fabulous launch shoes in Karavan Press book launch history! Fitting for a Queen!
The Prince Albert Leesfees returns this year, taking place between 30 August and 1 September. On 31 August, at 10:15AM, Andrew Brown will be speaking at the festival about his highly acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Bitterness of Olives. He will be in conversation with Karina Szczurek.
Join The Red Wheelbarrow on Thursday, 15th August 2024, on Zoom at 19:30 SAST for a reading by Sarah Frost, followed by an open mic.
Join via Zoom link or Meeting ID: 884 0600 8769 | Passcode: poetry
Sarah Frost works as an online editor for Juta Legalbrief in Durban. She has been writing poetry since she was nineteen years old, completed an MA in English Literature at UKZN and achieved a first in a module in Online Poetry at Wits. She won the Temenos prize for mystical poetry in the McGregor Poetry Competition in 2021. Her debut collection, Conduit, was published by Modjaji in 2011. Her second manuscript, River Fugue, will be brought out by Karavan Press later this year.
The following collections of poetry were selected by the judges to be on the shortlist of the Ingrid Jonker Prize 2024 – in alphabetical order:
Sarah Lubala – A History of Disappearance
Irya EM Maharaj – Earth Circuit
Sizakele Nkosi – unGrand Malume
Caitlin Stobie – Thin Slices
Melissa Sussens – Slaughterhouse
Congratulations to all shortlisted poets! A special note of appreciation to Melissa Sussens – thank you for publishing your stunning debut collection with Karavan Press!
Two new South African novels explore the ghosts of our past – and future
How much can we learn from alternative histories – and futures? That question was top of mind when I interviewed authors Karen Jennings and Nick Clelland about their new novels set in a counterfactual Cape Town.
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.
karavanpress.com 