The first weekend of September is Open Book Festival time (5-7 September 2025), and we – Karavan Press, Holland House Books and our wonderful authors – are thrilled to be part of these inspiring, thought-provoking and soul-restoring conversations.
Friday, 5 September 2025
11:00-12:00
12:30-13:30
14:00-15:00
16:00-17:00
Saturday, 6 September 2025
10:00-11:00
14:00-15:00
16:00-17:30
18:00-19:00
Sunday, 7 September 2025
14:00-15:00
Karavan Press author Nick Mulgrew is also in town for the festival, but will be wearing his publisher’s hat for the occasion and participating in a celebration of ten years of uHlanga Press. Congratulations, uHlanga, Nick and all your amazing poets. Every uHlanga poetry collection is a celebration of beauty and our humanity. Thank you for ten years of outstanding publishing!
We are thrilled to announce that Nick Mulgrew, the author of Tunnel, A Hibiscus Coast, The First Law of Sadness and Stations (among others), has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University for his story ‘The Storm’ – congratulations, Nick!
And congratulations to all other shortlisted authors!
NICK MULGREW was born in Durban in 1990. He writes novels, short fiction and poetry. Among his accolades are the 2016 Thomas Pringle Prize, the 2018 Nadine Gordimer Award, and a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship. His debut novel, A Hibiscus Coast, won the 2022 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Award. Since 2014 he has directed uHlanga, an acclaimed poetry press. He currently lives in Scotland, where he studies at the University of Dundee. Karavan Press published Nick’s first two novels and new editions of his short story collections:
Congratulations, Nick! It is a huge joy to be able to celebrate this special award with you.
This is the second year in a row that a Karavan Press author is recognised with this award and it means the world to all of us. Thank you, S.A. Literary Awards!
We are delighted to announce that the South African Literary Awards (SALA) nominated A Hibiscus Coastby Nick Mulgrew for the 2022 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award.
As many of you would have seen when the original press release about the University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing shortlists went out on 15 September, our A Hibiscus Coast by Nick Mulgrew was included — troublingly, however, for the debut prize.
But the novel is the author’s fourth book, a fact clearly stated both inside the book and on its cover.
We were thrilled nevertheless, because we thought that the inclusion of the novel might have been a simple administrative mix-up, and that the novel belonged on the main category’s shortlist.
When we asked for clarification before making an official announcement on our side, however, the response was:
“Unfortunately, the UJ literary prize panel erroneously shortlisted Nick Mulgrew’s The [sic] Hibiscus Coast as a debut publication. As his publisher pointed out that he had published creative writing previously, we have removed this wonderful book from the debut shortlist. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.”
With considerable disappointment, therefore, the book has been withdrawn entirely from consideration for the University of Johannesburg Prizes.
Thank you to all who congratulated Nick and Karavan Press after the initial press release. We are celebrating this exceptional novel (shortlist or no shortlist) and continue to congratulate the shortlisted authors.
Here is the updated, correct (sadly for us), press release: JRB.
The longlists for SA’s most prestigious annual literary awards for non-fiction and fiction – the Sunday Times Literary Awards – have been announced in partnership with Exclusive Books. Karavan Press has two titles on each list. Congratulations to all longlisted authors, and extra literary hugs to Karavan Press authors: Karen Jennings, Nick Mulgrew, Nancy Richards and Cathy Park Kelly!
This is the 21st year of the Sunday Times fiction prize. The criteria stipulate that the winning novel should be one of “rare imagination and style … a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction”.
JUDGES
EKOW DUKER — CHAIR Oil-field engineer turned banker turned writer, Ekow Duker grew up in Ghana, studied in the UK, the US and France and now lives and works in Joburg. His debut novels, White Wahala and Dying in New York, were published in 2014 and were followed in 2016 by The God Who Made Mistakes, and in 2019 by his fourth and most ambitious novel, Yellowbone.
KEVIN RITCHIE Ritchie spent 27 years at what is today Independent Media, including editing the company’s smallest daily newspaper, the Diamond Fields Advertiser in Kimberley, and its flagship, The Star, in Joburg. He received several journalism awards during his career and wrote the two-volume Reporting the Courts – A Handbook for South African Journalists. He also co-authored The A-Z of South African Politics (Jacana 2019). After leaving journalism in 2018, Ritchie founded a media consultancy which provides communication services, training for journalists and communicators and coaching for editors and CEOs. He writes a syndicated weekly opinion column in the Saturday Star.
NOMBONISO GASA Writer and political analyst, Gasa is a research fellow at the Centre for Law and Society and Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Law at the University of Cape Town. In the early ’90s, Gasa was part of the ANC’s Commission for the Women’s Emancipation of Women. Gasa has been published widely in newspapers and academic journals, including Women in South African History (HSRC), which she edited in 2007. She has sat in several public positions, including the Commission for Gender Equality, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and Development Bank of Southern Africa. Gasa has a long history in politics, feminism and women’s rights activism extending to her teenage years which saw her arrested several times by the apartheid government.
The award will be bestowed on a book that presents “the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power”, and that demonstrates “compassion, elegance of writing, and intellectual and moral integrity”.
JUDGES
GRIFFIN SHEA — CHAIR Shea is the founder of Bridge Books, an independent bookstore in downtown Johannesburg, and the author of a young adult novel, The Golden Rhino. Bridge Books focuses on African literature and on finding new ways of getting books to readers. The store’s non-profit African Book Trust is the lead partner in the Literary District project, a collaboration among booksellers, city agencies, businesses and other volunteers. Before opening Bridge Books, Griffin worked as a journalist for 15 years, mostly with the international news agency Agence France-Press (AFP).
NOMAVENDA MATHIANE Mathiane has been a journalist for over 35 years. Her writing career began in 1975 as a reporter at the World Newspapers and she later joined Frontline magazine, where she specialised in writing about life in South African townships. Since then she has worked for most of the major South African newspapers. Her last journalist job was writing for Business Day as the legislature reporter. Mathiane has written three books: Beyond the Headlines,South Africa: Diary of Troubled Times and Eyes in the Night: An Untold Zulu Story. She currently teaches isiZulu at a private primary school.
BONGANI NGQULUNGA Ngqulunga is with the University of Johannesburg where he currently serves as director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS). He is the author of The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka IsakaSeme, which won multiple awards, including the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Award in 2018. Ngqulunga was educated at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and at Brown University in the US, where he obtained a doctoral degree.
A Hibiscus Coast does not simplify anything, does not try to redeem nor condemn—it complicates. It shows how much we lose when we close ourselves off to that which is strange, Other and new—whether it is at home or somewhere else. Although it resists a linear path of character growth and healing for Mary (or any of the other characters) it does offer hope; hope in connection and relation, and in the expansive power of opening oneself up to that which is unknown and outside.
To say that I was moved would be the understatement of the last two years. Our first post-lockdown book launch at THE BOOK LOUNGE again – after more than seven hundred loss-filled days! Fittingly, it was of Nick Mulgrew’s debut novel A Hibiscus Coast, and he was interviewed by Bongani Kona. Nick is as much of a literary institutions in his own right as is The Book Lounge. So is Bongani. Between the three of them – Mervyn (and his Book Lounge team!), Bongani and Nick – they connect most of the local literary community around us in ways that are difficult to capture in a few words. I would just like to say that I do not want to imagine a world without them. They make what I do at Karavan Press possible. They give me hope when little else does. Thank you!
And thank you to all the writers and readers who showed up at The Book Lounge tonight – I cannot tell you what it meant to me to sit among you during this evening of celebration.
Dear Cape Town,
Nick Mulgrew will be in town and we would love to celebrate his debut novel with you.
Please join us on the 26th of April for the Cape Town launch of A Hibiscus Coast. Nick will be in conversation with Bongani Kona.
Limited seats, so please book early to avoid disappointment!
Hope to see you there.
Literary greetings,
Karina
karavanpress.com 