Karina Author, Book, Event

The Smell of Blood & Other Stories by Caitlin Stobie and Kharys Ateh Laue launched at EB Cavendish

We launched The Smell Of Blood & Other Stories by Caitlin Stobie & Kharys Ateh Laue at Exclusive Books Cavendish last night. We spoke about storytelling in general and the short story in particular, about the creative process involved in collaborating on a collection of this nature, and the challenges and joys of writing about intimacy, sexuality, violence and coming of age in a country as complex and fascinating as South Africa of the eighties and nineties.

Thank you to the authors (you are remarkable!) and to everyone who shared this special moment with us (so great to engage).

A special thank you to Linda and the EB Cavendish team. Thank you for all your kind words and for championing our stories. We are deeply grateful for the support.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: The Smell of Blood by Caitlin Stobie and Kharys Ateh Laue

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 Stobie
Kharys 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.