Ancient paths. New literary journeys.
Kerry Hammerton, editor of In Other Stories, will be running a few flash workshops this year. Participating authors will have an opportunity to submit their work to her second anthology of flashes.
The first of these takes place on Saturday, 1 February 2025, at the Cape Flats Book Festival and is FREE!
A wonderful opportunity to engage with the form and to attend a great book festival taking place at the same time! The anthology Kerry is compiling will be published by Karavan Press.
To begin with the liturgy of death, here intoned in Latin: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis. To begin at the end. To begin with the deep blue marks of lividity blooming against pale skin.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Lucid and lyrical, Lucienne Bestall’s debut collection extends reflections on the seductions and limitations of language. With words and pictures borrowed from literature, contemporary art, art history, and mass media, Except for Breath asks after those experiences that elude simple description and turn instead to image and metaphor.
The collected essays appear an unlikely gathering – taking as their respective subjects death, disappointment, divine love, an unfamiliar city, the news, and headaches. Yet while each is discrete, together they share subtle affinities, their narratives shaped by memory’s imprecisions and dreams retold, by magical thinking and wishful thinking, and coincidence mistaken as sign.
Pairing art writing and life writing, Bestall’s limpid prose is delicately revealing of her subjective encounter with a shared repertoire of familiar texts and images.
Publication date: February 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7764726-5-9
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUCIENNE BESTALL is a writer and curatorial researcher based in Cape Town. She holds a degree in Fine Art and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Lucienne has contributed to several art surveys from Phaidon, and her essay ‘All the Dead’ was included in the anthology Our Ghosts Were Once People (Jonathan Ball, 2022). Another essay, ‘A History of Fire’, was published by Raritan (Rutgers University, 2021) and is listed among the notable essays and literary non-fiction in The Best American Essays anthology (HarperCollins Publishers, 2022).
LUCIENNE BESTALL is a writer and curatorial researcher based in Cape Town. She holds a degree in Fine Art and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Lucienne has contributed to several art surveys from Phaidon, and her essay ‘All the Dead’ was included in the anthology Our Ghosts Were Once People (Jonathan Ball, 2022). Another essay, ‘A History of Fire’, was published by Raritan (Rutgers University, 2021) and is listed among the notable essays and literary non-fiction in The Best American Essays anthology (HarperCollins Publishers, 2022).
After the success of Tiger: Karavan Stories 2023 and Temperature: Karavan Stories 2024, be part of the third Karavan Stories anthology! We will meet again for a writing workshop at the end of April and together analyse what makes a good short story, read examples, go through a few writing exercises, begin exploring ideas for new stories and in the following months write, edit and compile an anthology of stories which will be published by Karavan Press.
WORKSHOP DATE: Saturday, 26 April 2025, 9:00 – 15:00
VENUE: 6 Banksia Road, Rosebank, 7700 Cape Town
PUBLICATION DATE: October / November 2025
FEE: R3 900
Includes: workshop, catering during the day of the workshop, guidance and feedback, editing, proofreading, 5 copies of the anthology and the option to submit your next manuscript to Karavan Press.
Maximum number of participants: 14 (ONLY 4 SPOTS STILL AVAILABLE, book as soon as possible to avoid disappointment).
To book your spot, contact Karina: Karavan Stories 2025
FACILITATOR / EDITOR:
Karina M. Szczurek is the author and (co)editor of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction. She won the MML Literature Award in the Category English Drama in 2012, received the Thomas Pringle Award for a portfolio of ad hoc reviews from the English Academy of Southern Africa in 2018 and the HSS Award for Best Fiction Edited Volume in 2024. She is a board member of Short Story Day Africa. In 2019, she founded Karavan Press, an independent publishing house, and a year later, established the Philida Literary Award.
I’d had my flash of that. I’d let down the drawbridge and got galloped over. I think. It was not a sense of self-pity. More like exhaustion. Like twenty years crushed into a dense mass the equivalent of a day. A day or so where time did not slow down, but stood completely, beautifully still.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The fondly nurtured idyll of the Karoo as a place of tranquillity is shattered when recently graduated journalist Grant Asher’s first real investigative assignment in the mid-1980s draws him into a series of unexplained murders in three quiet Karoo towns. There are two mystifying links: the victims were once part of a group of five hundred Polish-Jewish children housed at an orphanage in Oudtshoorn during the Second World War, and each victim was missing the tip of their little finger, removed post mortem. Exquisitely written, Wilson’s debut novel will stay with you long after the last page is turned.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANDREW ROBERT WILSON has been in the media and entertainment industry for nearly forty years, variously as actor, voice artist, TV presenter, writer for television and film, and series director of international TV formats. He was a theatre critic for the Mail & Guardian in the late 1990s, and worked extensively over the years in wildlife and conservation television. He was one of twenty authors published in the Short.Sharp.Stories anthology Fluid. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Rhodes University in 1985. The Fourth Boy is his debut novel.
Publication date: February 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0672224-4-4
ANDREW ROBERT WILSON has been in the media and entertainment industry for nearly forty years, variously as actor, voice artist, TV presenter, writer for television and film, and series director of international TV formats. He was a theatre critic for the Mail & Guardian in the late 1990s, and worked extensively over the years in wildlife and conservation television. He was one of twenty authors published in the Short.Sharp.Stories anthology Fluid. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Rhodes University in 1985. The Fourth Boy is his debut novel.
Last year was a remarkable year for Karavan Press in all kinds of ways, but specifically in terms of literary awards. Karavan Press authors won five major awards, two of which recognised What Remains by Dawn Garisch. The story collection won the HSS Award for Best Fiction Short Stories and SALA’s Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2024. In order to celebrate this wonderful achievement, we will be relaunching the collection at Exclusive Books Cavendish on Wednesday, 29 January, 5.30 for 6PM. Dawn will be in conversation with Mathapelo Mofokeng. Please join us for the celebration!
To RSVP, click here: Exclusive Books Cavendish
The first book festival of 2025 is just around the corner – Cape Flats Book Festival – and we are delighted to announce the following events featuring Karavan Press authors:
SATURDAY, 1 February, 10:45-11:25 | IN OTHER STORIES
SATURDAY, 1 February, 11:40-12:20 | STORYTELLING FOR CHILDREN
SATURDAY, 1 February, 12:35-13:15 | COURAGEOUS SURVIVORS: OVERCOMING A TRAUMATIC PAST
SATURDAY, 1 February, 15:20-16:00 | TRIBUTE TO POET IN EXILE: ATHOL WILLIAMS
Lester Walbrugh will also be at the Festival, speaking about the book he co-wrote with Karin Kortje – not to be missed!
SUNDAY, 2 February, 12:45-13:25 | DIE HELE STORIE / THE WHOLE STORY
For details about other events, please see:
Please join us for these two days of literary wonder!
Merry & Happy!🎄
(Background image fragment: Valentin Petkov | Unsplash)
Temperature is the result of the Karavan Stories Workshop & Anthology project, now in its second year.
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All the contributors gathered for a writing workshop at the end of April. Together, we discussed the intricacies of the short story, went through several writing exercises, decided on a theme for our anthology and began exploring ideas for individual stories. In the following months, we kept in touch, drafting and redrafting, until the book took shape.
The theme – temperature – was inspired by global and intimate, personal developments. Climate change continues to dominate our weather and news cycles. Heated international debates require cool and collected thinking for the sake of all our futures around the world. It has been an exceptionally difficult year for many – what allows us to survive, and thrive, is the warmth and kindness of our connections. Temperature is testimony to this simple truth.
Contributors could work with the theme in any way they wished, either reimagine it, see it as a springboard or a metaphor, or let their imaginations soar. The stories which emerged interpret ‘temperature’ in the most innovative ways, but they have one thing in common: hot off the press, they inspire reflections on interdependence – between individuals, communities and continents, as well as between humanity and our environment.
I would like to thank all contributing authors for embarking on this journey with Karavan Press: your stories are a cooling balm for a scorching reality. A big thank you to Monique Cleghorn for the exquisite design of our anthology. To our readers: enjoy!
Karina M. Szczurek
Cape Town, December 2024
Contributors: Sue Brown, Christine Coates, Gail Gilbride, Kerry Hammerton, Karen Horn, Karin Lijnes, Ciaran R. Maidwell, Firdose Moonda, Consuelo Roland, Anne Schlebusch, Joëlle Searle, Philisiwe Twijnstra, Alexandra Wood
Cover artwork: Hannes Meiring
Publisher: Karavan Press
Publication date: December 2024
ISBN: 978-1-0672224-3-7
The book will be available in all good bookshops in the new year. Please contact Karavan Press directly if you would like to get copies of the book earlier.
karavanpress.com 