Meg Vandermerwe, a promising new voice on the South African literary scene is about to make her debut with a collection of short stories called “THIS PLACE I CALL HOME”. Vandermerwe teaches Creative Writing at UWC with Antjie Krog. She did her MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The collection has already been praised by Ali Smith, which for a young writer is a big deal:
This slim collection of stories packs a punch well above its weight. Humane, compassionate and uncompromising, glinting with spirit and beauty, and written with a rare combination of discipline and vivacity, it marks the debut of a gifted writer.
Here is a short description of the stories:
Ten stories. Ten voices. Ten diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans during our country’s challenging history. In this thought-provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others. From an old widower who seems content on the outside but feels that his world is unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled racial persecution in 1930s Europe and now finds himself on a barren sheep farm in the Karoo, to a Polokwane teacher confronted with the moral dilemma of xenophobic sentiments in her township, This Place I Call Home, leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities. Even though these powerful stories are often characterised by hardship and personal loss, one cannot help but emerge inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit and the resilience of South Africa’s people.
As soon as the cover is ready, I will post it here…
Marcia Raymond invited me to give a talk on “getting published” at the Cape Town City Library on Saturday afternoon, February 13th, as part of the monthly Poetry Circle, one of activities of the Friends of the CTC Library. About 60 people were there, full of different questions and expectations. The talk was partly based on the blog I wrote last year about publishing poetry. But from a raised hand exercise it was clear that most of the audience were interested in other publishing issues, and not just poetry. How can I improve my writing? Make it publishable? I think writers need honest, clear, helpful feedback as a key step in improving their writing and getting published. But how do you get honest, detailed feedback? Well unless you are extremely lucky you will have to pay for it. Or you can belong to a group of writers who give each other feedback. If you aren’t part of a writers’ group, you can start one. The Centre for the Book has a pamphlet written by Makhosazana Xaba about starting a writers’ group.
Maire Fisher is the person who set up Live Writing , a fabulous service for writers, from which you can source feedback, reader’s reports, mentoring, editing, proofreading, and ghostwriting. Here’s a brief description from the Live Writing website of what’s on offer:
When you send your written work to Live Writing we establish exactly what it is that you need and then ensure as close as possible a match between editor and writer. No matter what sort of writing – a novel, poetry, creative non-fiction, short stories, a children’s book – Live Writing will give you honest, constructive feedback in a comprehensive report. The Live Writing team is highly competent and skilled, with years of writing and editing experience. We number among our ranks published authors, prize-winning poets, playwrights, journalists, copy writers, graduates from creative writing programmes and creative writing tutors.
You could also contact the Professional Editors’ Group for editing services. You need to get your manuscript into as polished a state as possible before submitting it to a publisher. I say this advisedly, having seen many manuscripts that look suspiciously like an early draft, if not a first draft.
How do I find out who the publishers are that might accept my manuscript? You have to be prepared to do some research. You can either go to a bookstore and browse amongst the books that are similar to your manuscript or you can check out the PASA website and then proceed to the individual publishers’ websites. The useful aspect of this research is that you will find out what each publisher’s specific submission guidelines are. PASA also puts out a PASA Directory with the contact details and brief description of what each member publisher’s focus is. You can also find the Small Publishers’ Catalogue (Africa) 2010 which has contact details of small presses including literary magazines, by contacting Blue Weaver or from a bookstore. The Small Publishers’ Catalogue will be out in early April 2010. Basil Van Rooyen’s book, Get your book published in 30 (relatively) easy steps : a hands-on-guide for South African authors (Penguin, 2005) is a useful if slightly discouraging book for self-publishers and writers. It also focuses much more on non-fiction than on fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, short stories, essays, and so on. (Clue: Non-fiction is a much more lucrative side of publishing than the aforementioned.)
The PASA website also has a lot of useful information about copyright, plagiarism, vacancies in the industry and so on.
What are literary magazines all about? You need to read at least one or two before submitting poems or short stories. In order to get a collection published you need to have had at least 10 poems and at least 5 or more published. Even then it is very difficult to get either published. Literary magazines need to have subscribers to keep them going. Not just those who submit writing. Here’s the tough question – do you subscribe to any literary magazines? If not, why not? If you think they are too expensive, can you answer these questions. How much is a subscription? Could you share a subscription with friends or other writers? Does your library subscribe to any of them? If not, why not? Which ones are most likely to be suitable to your type of writing?
How do I find out about launches and other bookish events? Join the loyalty clubs that bookstores have, or join their Facebook pages or groups. They will send you invitations to events. Check out Book SA and LitNet regularly. Attend readings and book launches when you can. Go to cultural events like Woordfees, Wordfest at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, the Cape Town International Book Fair, the Jozi Book Fair, the Franschoek Literary Festival, the KKNK, the Time of the Writer, Poetry Africa, Badilisha.
Especially for Cape Town writers: You can go to Off the Wall events in Observatory, at Kalk Bay Books and at Espresso Dot Kom in Kommetjie. To get onto the mailing list you should subscribe to this group, run selflessly by Hugh Hodge. You must get onto the mailing lists of The Book Lounge, Kalk Bay Books, Wordsworths and Exclusive Books.
What about self-publishing? If you want to self publish you need to get hold of a copy of A rough guide to small-scale and self-publishing published by the Centre for the Book. I wrote it when I worked at the Centre for the Book when a big part of my job was to give advice to people wanting to self-publish. Even if you don’t want to self-publish, the book offers a useful insight into publishing and how it works.
It isn’t cheap or easy to self-publish, but it can be rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. There are lots of little and big pot-holes to fall into in publishing. Do you homework before you embark on the process. Here are some good contacts: Megadigital is a Cape Town based printer that is worth it’s weight in gold to the small-scale publisher or self-publisher. Mousehand/Readhill is a company that can help you do quality self-publishing for a reasonable price. Some other good companies to know about are New Voices and Publisher.co.za. Aernout Zevenbergen has an excellent blog post where he describes both the joys and pains of self-publishing.
What about e-books and e-publishing – as a writer, what do I need to know? The short most effective answer is, go to Electric Book Works website, sign up to everything they have going and you will get the answers you are looking for. Follow Electric Book Works EBW and Arthur Attwell (the genius behind EBW) on Twitter and you will learn more than you could ever expect to learn about e-books and e-publishing.
Right, if you have any other questions – there are lots, I will endeavour (as will my fellow bloggers) to answer the questions or at least point you in the right direction.
Arja Salafranca’s collection of stories, The Thin Line is due out in April, 2010, just in time for the London Book Fair. Arja’s has received many accolades and prizes for her poetry and short fiction since the mid 90’s. She is currently the editor of the Sunday Independent’s Lifestyle section.
This is what Hamilton Wende has to say about the collection:
These are wonderful stories. They chart a new direction in South African fiction, where each line, each page – each story unfolds subtly, reaching deeper and more intimately into the tender spaces that exist in all our lives between love and doubt. Reading them kept me up late at night, wanting to know more about the characters’ lives. I was enthralled by the clarity and compassion of her insights; and moved by her obvious love for our fragile country and the fierce power of our unrelinquished hopes.
Here is the blurb:
‘Words grow up and reverberate … they come back’
The short stories in The Thin Line show what happens when a writer casts a thin line into a pool of character and situation. Characters assume position, while readers see the lines they have drawn around the selves in the stories. As readers we are lucky – we can then step over these lines and watch from inside the story. We see characters draw battle lines and retreat behind them, mark out their territory with boundary lines and dare others to cross them. We notice as story lines escape from one story to resurface in others, sometimes the merest thread, sometimes a bolder and more definite intrusion. And sometimes we watch story lines loop back on themselves to form circles, or sharply curved ellipses. Some stories are cross-hatched with many lines – webbed and netted – and we watch the people inside these struggle to escape from situations, often of their own making – and often because they didn’t draw the line when they should have. Lines create boxes and keep people lonely and separate from each other. And sometimes, lines fade, are erased, or can be crossed, with happy and satisfying effect.
Whatever may happen inside these stories the reader is hooked from the first one, reeled in on that thin line. And they don’t leave you alone. You get up to make some toast, or check the mail and as you’re walking back to your desk, you’re thinking about the woman artist, or Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, or Cleo in love with a married man after all these years, or poor skinny Mark, seeing his love teeter away from him.
“Only my love of the straight line keeps me going,” Carmen Herrera (Artist)
Jane Katjavivi suggested I should sign up with African Books Collective, who would then distribute Modjaji titles internationally. I signed the contract in December and posted it off. Got the signed copy back from Mary Jay, and asked Natascha (my book designer) to send off PDF files to Justin Cox in the USA. Which has lead to the books being posted on the ABC website and buyable by international customers. I believe that ABC use Lightning Source and sell books on a POD basis. I didn’t have to ship stock, just the PDFs, so in its own small way Modjaji has become part of the globalised world.
The problem in the past was if someone from abroad wanted to buy a Modjaji title, the bank charges were so huge that I would have deducted, I may as well have sent them the book for free and paid for the postage myself. Now to see how to market the books internationally. If anyone has ideas or suggestions do let me know.
By the way, the next book to come out of the Modjaji stables is a book, by Jane Katjavivi, it is a memoir called Undisciplined Heart. I asked Margie Orford to do me and Jane a huge favour, which she agreed to do. Over this past weekend amidst matric dances and full houses and all the other things Margie manages to do, she read Jane’s memoir and wrote this shout, which serves well as a blurb too:
Jane Katjavivi’s UNDISCIPLINED HEART weaves the story of Namibia’s liberation struggle, the political journey of a collective heart, with a love story – a journey of a loving heart. This is the story of a young Englishwoman who fell in love with a Namibian exile and who moved from a quiet American town to Namibia, a remote and beautiful country that few people have the privilege to know. At sea at first in the strange new place, Jane builds up a network of intimate friendships with a group of women. They meet weekly to talk about their work, their children, their lives until one of their group dies at 47 of heart failure. A terrible blow to all of them, but Jane’s moving story – of love, moral engagement and a desire to build both family and nation is woven around her own illness – an affliction of the heart that is diagnosed as an ‘ undisciplined heart.’ It is a disease that nearly kills her. It was Frederick Jameson who said once that ‘History is what hurts.’ But Jane Katjavivi’s frank and intimate memoir of love and politics, of survival and finding way to make a home, shows that history is also what heals when it is filtered through a loving heart and an open mind.
Here is Jane Katjavivi’s bio:
Jane Katjavivi has worked in publishing and book development since the early 1980’s. She is an English born, naturalised Namibian. She set up her own publishing company New Namibia Books and later opened a bookshop which specialised in books from and about Africa, and in particular Namibia. She was founding chairperson of the Association of Namibian Publishers and the Namibian Book Development Council, a founder member of the African Publishers’ Network (APNET) and a member of the Management Council of African Books Collective. She writes short stories and is working on a novel. Her memoir, Undisciplined Heart was written while she was in Europe with her husband who was Namibian ambassador to Brussels and Berlin.
March 2010 will see the Small Publishers’ Catalogue available to buy. Here’s a preview of the cover, done by Jesse Breytenbach (crocheted image) and lettering by Hannah Morris. I love the cover and have loved working on this project with the help of Bontle Senne, Natascha Mostert and Fouad Asfour of Khanya College. We decided to put together a catalogue at the Small Publishers’ meeting we had in Jozi last August.
The Catalogue has listings from about 40 African small publishers, there are articles by Gary Cummiskey, Arthur Attwell and Aernout Zevenbergen as well as some useful resources. The Catalogue will be useful to a number of different audiences including Africana librarians, booksellers, writers, book development agencies, the media and readers who are interested in the behind the scenes aspects of the world of books and publishing.
The Catalogue should be in bookstores by the end of March 2010 and copies will be available at this year’s London Book Fair. Publishers who may not be able to get to the LBF will still be on the international publishing map.
Die wonder van brood is dat dit met eenvoudige bestandele soos meel, water en sout gemaak word en tog kan die wonderlikste, geurigste gebak uit hierdie eenvoud na vore kom.
Dít is beslis deel van Hester van der Walt se fassinasie met brood. Hierdie fassinasie het gelei tot die publikasie van ‘n boek, getiteld Hester se brood, wat broodresepte en vertellinge van Van der Walt se bakkery op McGregor bevat.
Van der Walt het gisteraand by die bekendstelling van die boek by die Book Lounge in Kaapstad gesê sy gebruik baie min suurdeeg vir haar brode. Dit is ook nie die tradisionele soetsuurdeeg nie, maar haar eie skepping. “’n Mens gebruik die minimum,” het sy gesê. “Dit is byna ‘n leuse vir my.” Sy was verbaas oor die resultate wat sy uit hierdie minimum kon kry.
Broodbak is ook ‘n metafoor vir die lewe, het Pieter Veldsman, bekroonde sjef en skrywer, by die bekendstelling gesê. “Dit gaan nie om den brode nie, maar om die brood van die lewe.” As ‘n mens tussen die lyne van Van der Walt se boek lees, gaan dit volgens hom oor “vriendskap, vennootskap en omgee”. Hy het die boek met potlood en liniaal gelees en het in ‘n “beswyming van bewondering” gegaan oor bekoorlike beskrywings soos: “druk kuiltjies in die deeg met jou vingerpunte”.
Van der Walt is nie ‘n opgeleide kok nie, maar het op besonderse brood verlief geraak nadat sy oorsee getoer het. Daarna het haar soeke na die perfekte ciabatta begin. “Ek het baie Italiaanse kookboeke gehad, maar daar was min broodresepte in, want in Italië is daar in elk geval ‘n bakkery om elke hoek en draai. Toe het ek self begin eksperimenteer.”
Aan die einde van haar beroep by die Mediese Navorsingsraad het sy en Lies Hoogendoorn, die illustreerder van Hester se brood, na McGregor verhuis. Aanvanklik het hulle ‘n koffiewinkel bedryf en dit is hier waar hulle vir Niel Jonker ontmoet het. Hy was besig om elders ‘n broodoond te bou en het aangebied om vir Van der Walt ook een te bou. Só is Van der Walt se broodoond, Hestia, gebore.
En Van der Walt het uiteindelik die volmaakte brood gebak. Daarvan kan die gaste, wat by die bekendstelling aan haar brood gesmul het, heelhartig getuig.
I’m really pleased to see reviews of the poetry collections, as there aren’t many publications that carry reviews of Poetry. So thanks for that Litnet. I look forward to seeing reviews of Oleander and Burnt Offering in due course.
Talking of which Joan Metelerkamp read from Burnt Offering at Wordsworths in Knysna last evening. Joan let me know today that the event was well attended, and Gillian Carter introduced Joan. I will see if I can get a copy of her talk and post it. I’m longing to hear Joan read from Burnt Offering. She did read at the Cape Town Book Fair last year, but only one poem.
Dit is vir Die Book Lounge en Modjadji Books ‘n groot plesier om jou uit te nooi na die Kaapstadse bekendstelling van Hester se Brood deur Hester van der Walt.
Hester van der Walt sal ‘n gesprek voer met Peter Veldsman, restauranteur van die befaamde Emily’s by die Kloktoring in die Kaapse Waterfront, bekende skrywer, en internasionaal bekroonde chef.
Kom geniet saam met ons ʼn stukkie van Hester se heerlike brood en ʼn glasie Leopard’s Leap wyn, geborg deur Leopard’s Leap.
Hester van der Walt sal gesels oor die boek en daaruit voorlees.
Wow! What a launch we had in MacGregor on Wednesday night for Hester se Brood by Hester van der Walt. The owners of the Karoux restaurant, a fairly new MacGregor hot spot, know how to organise a fabulous party. Andre and Kurt are charming, efficient and warmly hospitable hosts. The evening was summery, the Karoo courtyard and fairy lights the perfect setting. Karoux had organised delicious local wines from the MacGregor Wine Farm. Their Colombard is the house white at Karoux and their Shiraz and Pinotage are prizewinners.
Hester specially made bread for the occasion, what a treat. She made foccaccia with delicious toppings and a huge celebratory challah with a chocolatey raisin filling that was so delicious I thought I’d died and gone to heaven after one bite. Positively orgasmic. I think I will have to learn how to make challah. Hester uses only Eureka stone ground flour for her breads.
As people came in they greeted Hester and Lies Hoogendoorn, her partner (whose art work is an integral part of the book, including the cover painting) enthusiastically. The guests bought copies of the books like ‘hot cakes’. Hester sat down to sign and before the more formal part of the proceedings were begun, we had almost sold out of books. I was also thrilled that Natascha Mostert, who did the book design and layout, came to the launch. Hester and Lies were thrilled to meet her and to thank her for her input and sensitive book design work.
The more formal proceedings started with me saying a few words about Modjaji Books and what I am trying to do with this small press. When I first met Hester and Lies to talk about the book, I got my Modjaji feeling, it is an electric lighting up inside of me feeling. While I read the manuscript, the feeling intensified. And during the launch I was afraid I might burst into ecstatic flames. Hester is a gifted writer and a wonderful person, calm, centred, loving, focused and many other things besides. Hester and Lies saw the printed book for the first time at about 3 in the afternoon. The launch was only a few hours later, the most thrilling for me was to see the way the took the book and looked and it and held and paged through it. I could see they loved it. Every now and then they would look a little choked up, a little misty-eyed.
Hester spoke, her is what she said:
It was not difficult to choose bread for tonight. It had to be foccacia. I have a clear memory of my first bite into the crust of its close relative, the ciabatta. I knew immediately that this was real bread – the crust rough and honest like our landscape and the inside crumb tasty and filled with large uneven holes. The ideal bread for breaking with your fingers and for soaking up sauce and for cleaning your plate.
I guess that was the beginning of my search: I wanted to make a perfect ciabatta! I paged through recipe books and I experimented, I waited with bated breath to take the bread from the oven. But then the first cut through the crust was a disappointment – this was not the real thing. Until one day, during a difficult time in my life, a time of burnout in my work, when I had no energy, I stumbled on a special book on artisan bread by Maggie Glezer. That was the start of my life with bread.
Hester se Brood tells the story of that search. I share the what and the why and the how of making real handmade bread in your own kitchen. I tell the story of the oven, the wood and the firemaker, the market, and of this village and its people who provided the womb for the story to grow.
Hester read from the first page of her book
‘n Mens kry brood — en Brood. Dis wat ek besef het toe ek vir die eerste keer in ‘n ciabatta gebyt het; daardie lugtige Italiaanse brood genaamd pantoffel: plat en eerlik met ‘n kors soos ‘n gehaarde landskap. Binne vol groot rysgate, ideaal om met jou vingers te skeur vir die opdoop van daardie laaste souserigheid uit jou boord.
Net daar het my soektog begin, ‘n Geblaai deur resepteboeke het my van die een boekwinkel na die ander geneem. Halfskelm maak ek myself staan by ‘n tafel vol boeke, ‘n resepteboek oopgeslaan en notaboekie op my handsak gebalanseer. So skryf ek af. By die huis gaan probeer ek die resep uit. Wag in spanning vir die brood om uit die oond te kom. H’m, lyk nie sleg nie. Maar die eerste sny deur die kors weet ek al: dis nie wat ek soek nie. dit lyk soos die tuisgebakte brood van my kinderdae, die soort wat net lekker is omdat dit nog halfwarm uit die oond is.
Colleen Crawford Cousins my friend and collaborater also spoke about the book. Hester and Lies are old friends of hers, and right from the start she too saw Hester’s book. She advised me on cover design and book design. She saw that the book is about making bread, but it is also and perhaps more importantly about making a handmade life and Hester chose to write it in Afrikaans as an act of reclamation of her mother tongue. I wished Hester had read for much longer when she read us two tantalising paragraphs.
Niel Jonker, who helped Hester and Lies to build their wood fired oven came specially to the launch with his family. He also spoke about his involvement with the oven, becoming a baker of bread and of his friendship with Hester and Lies.
Oh and a charming little detail: Colleen and I stayed at the MacGregor Wine Farm Cottages – the entrance to which says “Ina Naude en man”. There has to be a story there.
Last week about 20 publishers/ book trade people spent 3 days at Roodevallei, north of Pretoria, getting into gear for the London Book Fair. Jane Henshall, the South Africa Market Focus Co-ordinator, organised one of the best training experiences I have ever had. The venue was fabulous, comfortable rooms, with free wifi access, the food was divine, in fact too delicious and it was quite hard to eat in a restrained fashion. I don’t think we could have had a better facilitator than Sheila Lambie, of Oxford Brookes University Publishing Studies, a wonderful woman with years of experience in the UK book trade. Sheila worked us very hard, into the night on the Thursday night, but every minute was worth it. (The only thing that wasn’t absolutely spot on was the weather, it was like Cape Town in winter, only worse.)
Amy Webster, of the London Book Fair was there too, to give us hands on advice about the logistics and practicalities of what we need to do to get ourselves to the Fair. I learnt so much from Sheila, Amy and the other participants, that I felt very full and a little overwhelmed after the workshop. But now that I am back at my desk and have started to tackle some of the tasks, and to think strategically about the LBF, I’m feeling really excited.
I’m planning to select the publishers I want to meet very carefully to pitch rights sales to them. I’m going to pore over the professional seminar programme and choose a few key sessions to attend. Cory Doctorow is a presenter, I certainly won’t miss his session if I can help it. I plan to meet Alexander Leborg of Minuskel forlag who has bought the Norwegian rights to Whiplash by Tracey Farren.
The London Book Fair, a focused trade fair, seems to me to be quite different – tougher, more demanding, but also a giant step into making Modjaji Books sustainable, than our Cape Town Book Fair, a selling fair. The LBF needs careful planning, and I need to set my agenda, my strategic goals and stick to them as far as possible, allowing a little room for serendipity. Before the Roodevallei experience the LBF seemed very far away, now it seems all too soon.
I still can’t quite believe how lucky Modjaji Books and I am to have this once in a lifetime opportunity to be sponsored to go to the London Book Fair, and to be given a stand too, when South Africa is the Market Focus country and when South Africa is on people’s minds because of the 2010 soccer world cup.
Some of the people who were at the training included Debra Primo of UKZN Press, Tim Richman of Two Dogs, Jane Henshall, Amy Webster and Karen Brodie (British Council).
Meg Vandermerwe, a promising new voice on the South African literary scene is about to make her debut with a collection of short stories called “THIS PLACE I CALL HOME”. Vandermerwe teaches Creative Writing at UWC with Antjie Krog. She did her MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The collection has already been praised by Ali Smith, which for a young writer is a big deal:
