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

Karina Author, Book

Shift from Storyteller to Story Seller in 3 Steps

Fellow Authors,

Do you have boxes of your own finished books gathering dust? And would you love to get them into the hands of readers? But you cringe when you hear the word Marketing and you have to fight the urge to apologise every time you do a post about your book? 

How to find your readers and sell more books?

We’re having a free webinar on how to Shift from Storyteller to Story Seller in 3 Steps, with Cathy Park Kelly, author of two popular memoirs, and independent publisher Karavan Press. Together, we’ll show how you can sell more books without selling your soul. 

Click on this link to register for Wednesday, 16th August, 6 – 7pm: 

Shift from Storyteller to Story Seller in 3 Steps

Karina Author, Book, Event

Pretoria launch of THE FREIGHTENED by Lethokuhle Msimang

The Frightened by Lethokuhle Msimang is partly set in Paris. Lethokuhle herself lived and studied in Paris and has continued learning French at the Alliance Française de Pretoria. The institute has invited her to launch her novella with them. If you are in Pretoria on 20 July, this is your opportunity to meet Lethokuhle and to celebrate the launch of her stunning book with her. She will be in conversation with Thobile Ndimande.

Karina Author, Book, Event

Rosebank Writers: Book talk with Kerry Hammerton

Photo credit: Digby Young

A poetry morning next to the fireplace. Rosebank Writers and Friends gathered yesterday next to a cosy fire to listen to Kerry Hammerton speak about and read from her latest poetry collection, afterwards. I (Karina) had the privilege to ask the questions. It was a beautiful way to begin the weekend: hearing Kerry speak about her work was nourishment for the soul and the mind.

Thank you to all who attended, especially all the Rosebank Writers. Thank you also to Kim Gurney for recording the conversation and Digby Young for the photographs.

The Rosebank Writers have been meeting for almost a year now and are going from strength to strength.

All photographs: Digby Young

Karina Author, Book, Event

Cape Town launch of THE FRIGHTENED by Lethokuhle Msimang

We are thrilled to announce that Lethokuhle Msimang will be in Cape Town on 13 July and will be launching her novella, The Frightened, at The Book Lounge. She will be in conversation with Mohale Mashigo. Need we say more? You have got to be there! RSVP details below:

Lethokuhle won’t be joining us for the Open Book Festival later this year, so if you would like to meet her and get your copy of The Frightened signed, this is the opportunity!

Karina Author, Book, Review

Diane Awerbuck reviews TUNNEL by Nick Mulgrew for the Sunday Times

You’ve been here before. Confinement in close quarters after a disaster not of your making sounds pretty familiar, but Nick Mulgrew’s claustrophobic new novel, Tunnel, isn’t obviously about the pandemic.

It deals instead with the fallout after some unnamed but probably nuclear events that collapse the Huguenot Tunnel and render the surrounds uninhabitable. This terrifying prospect must surely have occurred to anyone travelling in carbon-monoxided convoy through the intestines of the Du Toitskloof mountains. How does this concrete hold back the weight of the mountain? What if it all falls in? Who would come? And how long would that take? And also, crucially for this novel, would it be worth surviving?

Set in a South Africa that’s the same but different, Tunnel plays with the idea of inversion. There’s a South-West and a Caprivi, and there are workers’ compounds and bush cops and baboons — but not as we know them. The day the action takes place is March Day, and all travellers need permits. Then the world goes dark.

After the characters’ initial panic, they find their space literally shrunk and the tunnel fast becomes “the inside-outside”. Their hell descent must continue before they can eventually find their way to fresh air and the elegiac upswing of the ending …

Continue reading: Sunday Times