Join Woman Zone Cape Town for their first-ever BOOK SWAP, celebrating the power of stories FOR, BY, and ABOUT Women as part of the Artscape Women’s Humanity Arts Festival!
🗓 Date: Saturday, 16 August 2025 ⏰ Time: 13:00 – 15:00 📍 Location: Theatre Foyer Well at Artscape
How it works: Bring up to 10 books from your collection and swap them out for new reads to take home! Feel free to bring extra books; these will either be added to the WZ Library or donated to a charity supporting women’s literacy and empowerment.
Woman Zone is thrilled to partner with leading publishing houses who will contribute exciting new releases to the swap.
Swap Rules:
Please bring books that are in good, readable condition. Only books you would personally recommend to others, to ensure quality and enjoyment for all. Arrive early to get the best picks! Come for the books, stay for the vibrant festival vibes! Don’t miss this unique opportunity to connect, share stories, and celebrate women’s voices. RSVP today and join the celebration!
In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose – officially: Queen Thobeka – was launched at Woman Zone as part of the Artscape Women’s Humanity Festival yesterday. Thobeka was in conversation with Nancy Richards, who has been a champion of Thobeka’s memoir from the start when she first met this courageous woman and heard her remarkable story.
Yesterday’s launch interview was followed by a deeply moving Q&A during which other women praised Thobeka, her book, and shared their own stories of becoming, resilience and power. It was an honour to be present and to listen. We all went away inspired.
Thank you, Queen Thobeka, for your strength, wisdom and willingness to be vulnerable and to open up spaces for vital conversations. Thank you to Nancy for all the encouragement and support, and for leading the conversation. To Woman Zone – deepest gratitude for championing women’s lives & stories. And to Artscape for hosting. Thank you to all who attended and made this occasion beyond special!
Note Thobeka’s shoes! Definitely the most fabulous launch shoes in Karavan Press book launch history! Fitting for a Queen!
“Can we truly celebrate 30 years of democracy when so many women and children are still prevented from freely and fairly exercising their right to democracy, freedom, equality and above all, humanity?” These words from Marlene le Roux, CEO of Artscape the Theatre Centre, sum up the thinking behind this year’s Artscape Women’s Humanity Festival (AWHF), planned in association with Woman Zone for Women’s Month. — LitNet
Together with the AWHF and Woman Zone, we will be launching Thobeka Yose‘s inspirational memoir, In Silence My Heart Speaks, during the AWHF. Thobeka will be in conversation with Nancy Richards, who has accompanied Thobeka on her writing journey from the beginning and who wrote a beautiful foreword to the book:
Writing your own story, I imagine, must be like running barefoot. Whatever the ground texture, you are going to feel it intensely. But you have to finish. At the end of her ‘run’, I suspect, Thobeka Yose may have had sore soles, not only from reliving her own story, but that of her mother. Neither of them easy journeys. When I first met Thobeka at a group workshop with Ntsiki Sigege at the Artscape Resource Centre back in 2016, she, like everyone else, shared a bit about herself. It was clear she’d introspected long and hard on her situation. But instead of shying away from the issues, she’d obviously decided to confront and interrogate them, both from her own perspective and those of others whose actions had had such impact on her. I suggested she write it down as a way, perhaps, of making sense of it and getting it off her chest. The workshop over, richer for the shared experiences, we all went our separate ways. A few short months later, I was amazed to get an email from Thobeka saying, ‘I took your advice and wrote! My manuscript is with a publisher as we speak.’ …
It is truly special for us to be launching this stunning book at Artscape and with Woman Zone – spaces that nurture and support women’s creativity and make dreams come true. And how fitting that it is during August and the AWHF. Please join us for this wonderful occasion on Saturday, 17 August, at 10:30 a.m.
I show my scars now with pride because I survived. This is me owning my story, all of it, the good and the bad.
A searing and brave memoir chronicling the author’s resilience, compassion and growth as she moves from a childhood of trauma, through the challenges of dealing with the early loss of her beloved husband and becoming a single parent as well as subsequently accompanying her child on a difficult journey of self-discovery, to a life of acceptance and forgiveness. Thobeka Yose confronts the taboos surrounding mental health, abuse, betrayal and sexual identity with fearless honesty, kindness and understanding that will inspire countless others.
I have just finished your book of short stories, What Remains. I am so sad. I am already missing my nightly fix of meetings with your panoply of thinking, suffering, worrying, reflective, ordinary-not-ordinary characters. Of stepping, albeit briefly, into their exquisitely word-painted lives, their shocking encounters, intriguing histories – in some cases deep into their hearts, their troubled psyches and relationships, in others, fathoms deep into their upbringings to touch on what makes them tick. Sometimes I could piece together the puzzle of their nostalgic pasts, and sometimes, at the endings, I was left wondering about their futures – their next steps, like sitting on the edge of a cliff …
To close the WZ Book Club year of 2022, the readers went down to the sea, to Beach Blanc Cafe next to the lighthouse on Woodbridge Island to hear the story of The Skipper’s Daughter by Woman Zone founder Nancy Richards and published by Karavan Press. Nancy was in conversation with artist Kim Gurney, the author of a book called Panya Routes. Listen here for some salty tales!
First time novelist, but well practiced feminist researcher, Joy Watson’s The Other Me (Karavan Press) is an eye-opening book with a damaged but fascinating central character. Writer, editor, publisher Karina Szczurek digs deeper to get the back story…
“… But having cracked open the slender spine, I found it to be even more unassuming and quiet – no prologue, no fanfare, no arcane dedication, hand-picked lines of poetry – even the acknowledgements are a mere eight grateful lines – but exquisite in its simplicity. ‘The First Day’ announces the opening chapter – and with that you step ashore. Onto Samuel’s island. Where he’s been lighthouse keeper for over two decades. Washing up with you is a body – one of many that have found their way onto the pebbly and unwelcoming beach. You come to know well, if not its exact whereabouts off Africa, the lie of the island, its nooks, crannies, secret spots. As well as Samuel’s sparse, isolated cottage where everything has its place. But you don’t stay there. Because as his memory is jolted by the arrival of this body, this man, Samuel’s reflections take us back into the dark, sometimes troubled past he was marked by on the mainland. Again, Jennings doesn’t pinpoint the exact times and places of this not so long ago time but if you live towards the tip of Africa, you can feel it in your southern bones. Smell it in her carefully chosen words. By ‘The Fourth Day’, I was all but holding my breath. I’m ashamed to have taken so long, but richer for reading such a thoughtful book, with a punch way above its weight.”
“In her book Death and the After Parties – a memoir (Karavan Press) JOANNE HICHENS shares the full range of emotions she felt following first the death of her mother, then in quick succession her husband, her father and her mother-in-law. Recovery after the death of loved ones is a life-long affair – but what she deals with here is coping with the raw early stages and the agonising aftermath. It is a book to which every one can relate, on many different levels.”
karavanpress.com 