Modjaji Books

Modjaji in the news!

A nice piece in the Tatler and other local Cape Town papers today, about Megan Hall, Fourth Child and Modjaji! Here’s the article text:

It’s all a leap of faith and talent

Colleen Higgs of Sybrand Park took a leap of faith when she left her job of seven years to start her own publishing company.

And she believes the rain queen, Modjaji, is guiding her in her new venture.

Ms Higgs is a writer who created and managed the award-winning Community Publishing Project (CPP) at the Centre for the Book in Cape Town for seven years. She was the Centre’s information manager. Her work involved writer support, management, developing and publishing. The CPP won an Arts and Culture Trust award last year and released 30 books in a variety of languages.

Last year she decided to use the knowledge and contacts she has built up at the Centre for the Book to start her own independent press.

“I spent my life giving advice to other writers, I think seven years is a long enough time to work at one place,” she said.

“I wanted to be self-employed. I wanted to have autonomy and to be more creative. I’m well-networked. I’ve got a lot of ideas.”

She named the company Modjaji Books after the now nearly extinct South African Rain Queen dynasty,

“The name came to me rather than me coming up with it. I had the sense of being lead by Modjaji because she is in more of a hurry and has bigger dreams than I have,” Ms Higgs said.

At the launch of the first book called Fourth Child, she said in her speech, “One day as I was driving home in the traffic, the name of Modjaji popped into my heart and didn’t leave. I knew that this had to be the name of the imprint. It also made a lot of sense to me, because as a child in Lesotho, my Sotho name was Pulani, daughter of the rain. the theme of rain, rain queen, tears, fertility, growth, new life, rain-maker – a ll of this seems to be associated with Modjaji…

‘Since then Modjaji has taken on a life of her own. I feel her presence with me all the time, tugging at my arm, breathing down my neck, and it is slightly disturbing. She seems to want to fly before she can walk. Like my own daughter, Kate, she is determined and in a hurry, impatient, and she has very clear ideas of where she is going and what she wants, and I find myself listening breathlessly and feeling both thrilled and daunted.”

The kind of writers Modjaji Books publishes are the kind that bigger publishers don’t pay much attention to – emerging writers and poets.

“I am interested in a small independent press that would publish things that larger companies don’t want to take a risk with. The work of women. Books that are edgy treading on issues that our out of the mainstream,” she said.

Thus far the company has published two poetry books, Fourth Child by Megan Hall and Life in Translation by Azila Talit Reisenberger and the sales of both books are doing well.

“I’m proud of them, both of the books. They were worth publishing for sure. I’ve had an amazingly positive response from people who have heard about what I am doing. It just feels right. I’m excited about it.”

For details email modjaji.books@gmail.com

by Lauren O’Connor

Tatler, Thursday April 17, 2008

Megan Hall, who wrote Fourth Child, studied English at the University of Cape Town. She has published her poems in several journals. She currently manages a team of editors for Oxford University Press.

“Colleen and I met at a British Council sponsored writing programme. We made friends then. She read some of my poems and liked them. She advised me to get them published.”

Many years later Ms Higgs herself decided to publish the poetry.

“The hardest part of putting the book together was deciding in what order to put the poems. There were originally 60 poems that could have gone in, but only 35 were used so it was a process of what fits into the narrative. A lot of it was about whether to put all the love poems together or use the book to tell a more integrated story. I build on one or more to tell a story.”

“I started to write some of the poems in the book about eight years ago. It’s been a very good process and I’m very glad the book is out there.”

Of the publishing industry she said: “I don’t think that as a poet you can plan for more books. It’s very hard to get published as a poet especially in South Africa and to think you are going to have another book is probably delusional.

Currently Ms Hall is “scratching poems down while feeding her baby in the middle of the night.”