Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: The Algebra of Insignificance by Stephen Symons

Stephen Symons’s poetry enters a realm of tenderness, the quiet embrace of nature, and the frailties of the human spirit from which beauty arises. I hold his poetry in the highest regard. He is a masterful image maker and a believer in the power of close looking. This poet is a gem.

– David Keplinger, author of Another City and The Long Answer: New and Selected Poems

Publication date: March 2024

ISBN: 978-1-7764726-8-0

STEPHEN SYMONS has published poetry and short fiction in journals, magazines and anthologies, locally and internationally. His debut collection, Questions for the Sea (uHlanga, 2016), received an honourable mention for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and was also shortlisted for the 2017 Ingrid Jonker Prize. His unpublished collection Spioenkop was a semi-finalist for the Hudson Prize for Poetry (USA) in 2015. His second collection, Landscapes of Light and Loss (Dryad Press), was published in 2018, and third collection, FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS POINTLESS AND PERFECT (Karavan Press), in 2020. Small Souls, a collection of collected and new poems was published in 2022 by Karavan Press. The collection was shortlisted for a South African Literary Award (2023) and includes the winning poem of the 2021 The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Competition, ‘Small Souls’. Symons holds a PhD in History (University of Pretoria) and an MA in Creative Writing (University of Cape Town). He lives with his family in Oranjezicht, Cape Town.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Love Stories for Ghosts by Alex Latimer

A collection of hopeful stories about living, dying and falling in love, with photographs by Guy Neveling.

An evil man is reincarnated as a terrible smell and over time falls in love with a woman. A stranger arrives at the door of a heavenly house, but unlike everyone else there, she will only live once. A person dies and goes to a place where all living things go – a menagerie of animals roaming an endless meadow – and he finds love in familiar faces. A mother and a son reunite in a heaven that is also a hell – depending on how you see it. Two people die on the moon and live undead through eons, moving through the phases of love while watching the lights on Earth flicker out.

Publication date: 8 March 2024

ISBN: 978-1-7764581-9-6

“Excitingly inventive writing that will touch you long after reading – sometimes with a cold and bony finger, and sometimes with the gentle breath of a lovesick ghost.”

 – Henrietta Rose-Innes

“Unusually humorous and without sentimentality, these stories illuminate the extraordinarily strange places – in this world as well as others – that life and death will take us.”

– Nick Mulgrew

ALEX LATIMER is an award-winning picture book author based in Cape Town. He has also written three novels. Extinction, published here for the first time, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Love Stories for Ghosts is his debut collection.

GUY NEVELING has picked up numerous photography awards at international advertising festivals, but now dedicates his time primarily to personal work, continually nurturing his love for imagery. He lives in Simon’s Town.

Karina Author

Author: Alex Latimer

ALEX LATIMER is an award-winning picture book author based in Cape Town. He has also written three novels. ‘Extinction’, published for the first time in Love Stories for Ghosts, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Love Stories for Ghosts is his debut collection.

Karina Author

Author: Byron Loker

BYRON LOKER has been called by fellow South African man of letters, Ben Trovato, ‘a talented writer who could go far if only he’d give up surfing and chasing women.’ He was once a film student but is now fully rehabilitated. His literary hero is Ernest Hemingway, as you can probably tell by these staccato sentences. He lives in the ‘deep south’ of the Cape Peninsula with a very sweet ginger tabby cat named Georgie Love and a pile of regrets, chief among them being all the women who got away from him. In early 2024, Karavan Press published a new edition of Byron’s debut short story collection, New Swell, and will publish his new, Heavy Water, later this year.

Author photograph: Nic Mayger

Karina Author, Book

New edition of Byron Loker’s debut collection of stories NEW SWELL

Some stories can glue you to the page because of what they say, others because of how they say it. Byron Loker’s stories do both. His tales will ring true for all South Africans who have ever surfed, or sat with an old railway man or a car guard or domestic workers. Loker has a clear eye on ordinary daily life. He is funny most of the time, but often very poignant too, in these beautifully crafted stories.

Prescribed for English Literature Study Short Stories Grade 9 – Western Cape Education Department

Publisher (this edition): Karavan Press (first published by Double Storey Books, a division of Juta & Co. Ltd 2006)

ISBN: 978-1-7764064-2-5

Publication date: January 2024

Praise for New Swell

‘… modern-day South African Beat, easy to read, sharply observed, engaging, sad, but also very funny’ – Surfers’ Path

‘If the flat naturalism recalls Hemingway, other stories, in their deliberately straight-faced contemplation of horrors, recall Bosman’ – Sunday Independent

‘… wit engaged with the human condition at a deeper level of meaning’ – Sunday Times

‘… stories different from anything that has been written in English in South Africa – they are fresh, honest, off the wall but simultaneously clear moments of everyday life. At the same time they owe much in tone and style to the work of Herman Charles Bosman without being in any way imitative. It is as if the short story tradition, which was interrupted by the dictates of apartheid, has been resumed’ – Mike Nicol

‘Stories with a light touch which has the effect, as such touches at best can do, of dredging up certain shadows or resonances that go on resonating … very affecting – and stylistically – sure-footed to a fault’ – Stephen Watson

‘… a particularly gifted and dedicated writer’ – André Brink

Author photograph by Nic Mayger

BYRON LOKER has been called by fellow South African man of letters, Ben Trovato, ‘a talented writer who could go far if only he’d give up surfing and chasing women.’ He was once a film student but is now fully rehabilitated. His literary hero is Ernest Hemingway, as you can probably tell by these staccato sentences. He lives in the ‘deep south’ of the Cape Peninsula with a very sweet ginger tabby cat named Georgie Love and a pile of regrets, chief among them being all the women who got away from him.

Karina Author, Book, Event

The Bitterness of Olives launched at Liberty Books

We launched The Bitterness of Olives by Andrew Brown at Liberty Books last night. Andrew always knew that it would be difficult to talk about his latest novel which is set at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but no one could have predicted just how topical the book would become. It was published in time for the Open Book Festival in early September, almost exactly a month before the 7th of October. Since then, the world the novel is set in has once again been completely shattered by violence and suffering. It has become even more fraught to discuss the novel in the context of our tragic present, but the way Christy Weyer and Andrew spoke about it last night was soul-restoring. Thank you both for your kindness, integrity and courage! Thank you for offering insight and gentleness at a time when both are deeply needed.

Thank you to all who attended, but especially to Karavan Press authors Lester Walbrugh and Joanne Hichens for your continued support!

Lester also baked fresh bread (best in the country!) for the occasion, and fittingly, we enjoyed it with olives. Thank you, Lester!

Lester also shared the good news with us that one of his stories from Let It Fall Where It Will has been turned into a short film which will premier in the new year, and that he has finished editing the first Afrikaans book that Karavan Press will publish, a memoir by Erika Viljoen!

Launching The Bitterness of Olives at Liberty Books was the perfect way to end a year of exciting book events. Thank you to Christy for being a champion of local literature, for inviting us to share our stories with the wonderful readers of Elgin and for leading the conversations that make us believe that what we do is meaningful to others.

Dear festive season travellers! If you are on the N2 in Grabouw, stop at Liberty Books for your holiday read fix. You will not regret it!

Karina Author, Book, Event

Salon Hecate’s 1st Birthday

Happy Birthday, Salon Hecate!

Last night, writers, readers and other creatives descended on Noordhoek Art Point to celebrate Salon Hecate’s 1st Birthday. It has been a year of inspiring artistic gatherings. Thank you to Helen Moffett and the Art Point team for everything that you are doing for the community! We all look forward to many more years of Salon Hecate.