2011

Making rain for Southern African women writers


MODJAJI BOOKS
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 catalogue 2011
Difficult Gifts Woman Unfolding
Hemispheres Book of African Names
Conduit Small Publishers' Catalogue 2010
Reclaiming the L-Word Burnt Offering
Go Tell the Sun Please, Take Photographs
Got No Secrets Strange Fruit
A Suitable Girl Oleander
These are the Lies I told you Invisible Earthquake
Piece Work Whiplash
Missing Hester se Brood
removing Undisciplined Heart
Swimming with Cobras The Bed Book of Short Stories
Words and Flesh This Place I Call Home
Bom Boy The Everyday Wife
Lambat Street The Thin Line
I'll Tell the Judge Life in Translation
Beyond the Delivery Room Fourth Child

eBooks available from www.scribd.com

new releases
 new release

Dawn Garisch is a doctor

who writes, a poet who
walks, a researcher who
dances. She lives in Cape
Town near the mountain
and the sea and has two
grown sons. Her last novel,
Difficult Gifts
Trespass, was nominated
for the Commonwealth Prize
in Africa.

Dawn Garisch
Most of the poems in this collection had earlier lives in New Coin, New Contrast,
Scrutiny2, Carapace, Fidelities, Green Dragon and Ons Klytlie.
There is a balance of emotion and craft in Dawn Garisch’s poetry, a seamless
welding of raw experience and self-observation, of music and thought. She writes
the most personal spaces, always lit by her wry, focused understanding. – Ken
Barris
Dawn’s poems reveal a warm, keen eye for the intricacies, delicacies and
difficulties of language and love. – Tania van Schalkwyk
The motif of the body is central to Garisch’s work; it changes – it can leave. It is also
a place of sustenance, and offers the possibility of transcending grief. The images
stay with me: the pungent eroticism in the poem ‘The Proper Use of Flowers’, or
love encountered as a “trout that breathes polluted water”. – Alan Finlay

56 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-32-6
 new release

Karen Lazar is an English

educator at the Wits School
of Education. Her MA and
Phd, both from Wits, are
in South African gender
studies. This is Karen’s first
volume of (first person) crea-
Hemispheres
tive non-fiction. Karen had a
stroke in 2001, from which
she has partially recovered.

Karen Lazar
"Home is as old as one’s skin but as elusive as an object seen through the wrong
end of a telescope.” It is this sense of a view, skewed, intangible, which echoes
throughout Karen Lazar’s Hemispheres. Waking in hospital after a post-operative
stroke, she finds one side of her body paralysed and her world knocked out of
kilter. Spatial, perceptual and subjective changes force her to view her new life in
facets. The fragmented view is made apparent by means of a triptych of clusters
which charts Karen's experience from Metamorphosis, through Rehabilitation
and Adaptation. Quietly reflective, deeply lyrical, Hemispheres is concerned with
returning separated parts into a whole and coming home to the self.
“A filigree of finely-crafted pieces, Hemispheres narrates the journey of re-
composing life, joy and love from a body made alien through stroke. Wry, ironic,
comic, joyous, desolate, celebratory, surreal, the mosaic of text reconfigures love
from loss; each subtle fragment a tessera against time. A book of desolation and
consolation, I will return to it often.” Prof. Isabel Hofmeyr, African Literature, Wits
“A collection of rare/nuanced and tender insights. Lazar takes us into the gyre of
re-orientation post-stroke, sharing what is lost and what is claimed when what
you’ve always been and known changes. A book that pulses with quiet courage
88 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-24-1
and celebrates it in others.”Joanne Fedler
 new release

Sarah Frost is a single moth-

er to a six year old boy. She
works as an editor for Juta
Legalbrief, Durban. She has

Conduit
completed an MA in English
Literature, and also a module
on Creative Writing, UKZN.
She has been published in
various SA journals, and also
some in the US.

Sarah Frost
Conduit is a book of pared-down poems, graphically tracking a young woman's
journey from the lonely spaces of childhood to the creative, powerful realm of
womanhood. Restrained and earnest, these poems grapple with the experiences
of being a daughter, a mother, and a lover. In ‘Bellwood’ the poet details her
struggle for clarity: ‘She scrawls in her notebook as a swimmer, fearful, under
water/ might search the opacity for a handhold, the roughness of rock./ She
writes tentatively, as one standing up, walking to shore/ might feel mud and
soft lake moss beneath her feet, yielding’. Sarah Frost’s is a new, but refreshingly
mature poetic voice.

"These are poems of drowning and coming up again. Of surviving with lungs that
breathe water and sunlight. These are poems of longing and loss. Of searching
for a foothold in a world where all slides and changes. Sarah Frost is a new voice
in South African poetry. A clear and strong and exciting voice. Read her." Kobus
Moolman

64 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-27-2
 new release

Alleyn Diesel taught

Religious Studies at UKZN C o-publis hed w it h M a T hok o' s B ook s
during the 90s, specialising
in Hinduism in KZN. In 2007
Wits University Press pub-
lished her anthology Shakti:
Stories of Indian Women in
South Africa. She is currently
an Honorary Research Fel-
low in Religious Studies.

Edited by Alleyn Diesel

“This brave and moving collection of stories by South African lesbian women
from different backgrounds reminds us, again, that rights are never finally won
in legislatures or in court rooms. They are won by people exercising them. The
authors of the stories and poems in this book have done just that. They have stood
up to celebrate the dignity of lesbian women in South Africa. Each contribution
is different. And each intensely personal. And each one reminds us of the urgent
need for us to stop hate crime and to create a safe society for all LGBT South
Africans.” Kate O'Regan, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

"Moving lesbianism away from spectacle and the exotic, the collection emerges
from the wellsprings of lived experience. It tells flesh and blood stories – stories
of the values, loves, struggles and challenges of living in a society that continues
to perpetuate many myths, mythologies and misconceptions about lesbians."
Dr Devarakshanam (Betty) Govinden

224 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-28-9
 new release

Wame Molefhe started

writing short stories in 2005.
She freelances for a number
of publications and also
writes for TV. Just Once, her
children’s collection of short
stories was published in
Go Tell the Sun
2009. Go Tell the Sun is her
second short story collection.

Wame Molefhe
“Wame Molefhe’s stories have a gentle, unassuming yet intimate and captivating
feel to them. Set in Botswana, the stories trace the lives of characters whose
paths cross and re-cross each others’, some times in and through love, at other
times through tragedy. And through them the author brings to bear a woman’s
perspective on the societal mores in which sexual abuse, homophobia and AIDS,
among others, flourish and spread. The social content and views are never
proclaimed as a loud agenda; instead, it forms a ‘natural’ backdrop to the lives
of the characters, something that may raise a wry comment or thought in one
character, while eliciting a mere shrug from another. Molefhe’s voice is, to some
extent, a world-weary voice, weary of all she has seen of society’s failures, but
never without the gentleness often absent and much needed in broken societies,
and never without the hope and redemption that can be found in love and the
imagination.” Rustum Kozain

128 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-03-6
 new release

Danila Botha was born in

Johannesburg, and moved C o-publis hed w it h T ight rope B ook s ( CA N)
to Canada in her teens. She
studied Creative Writing at
York University and at Hum-
ber School for Writers, both
in Toronto. She volunteered
Got No Secrets
at two organizations benefit-
ting the homeless, which
inspired many of the stories.

Danila Botha
A startling and original new voice that owes as much to Black Flag and Bikini
Kill as it does to J.D. Salinger and Heather O’Neill. A South African copywriter is
transplanted to the urban jungle of Manhattan. A recovering rape victim tries to
resume a normal life. A Toronto nurse cuts herself to fill her emptiness. In Got No
Secrets, Danila Botha takes us into the private lives of twelve different women,
with only one question in mind: What if these women were you? From addiction
to abuse, from childhood to suicide, from Hillbrow, Johannesburg, to downtown
Toronto, Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always
fearless.
"These stories grab you by the throat and don't let you go, bearing witness to lives
in which self-destruction and hope are like symbions, each feeding the other."
Nino Ricci

"Dark, relentless, and unflinching. Danila Botha's is a bold new voice." Julia Tausch

ISBN 978-1-920397-41-8
 new release

Born in Zimbabwe in 1974,

Michelle McGrane spent C o-publ is hed w it h P i ndrop P r es s ( UK )
her childhood in Malawi and
moved to South Africa with
her family when she was
fourteen. She lives in Johan-
nesburg and is the author of
two previous collections.

Michelle McGrane
“Every poem in The Suitable Girl grabs the reader immediately and then proceeds
to take her, by a surprising route, to its strange conclusion, taking in much wit,
irony, lyricism and sensual detail on the way. These are trips well worth the
taking.” Joanne Limburg
“Michelle McGrane’s The Suitable Girl shows a sophisticated range of reference
together with a powerful and moving emotional address. There is great technical
range here which includes prose poems alongside sinewy lyrics; elegy jostles with
imaginative sci-fi, humour with horror in language which is often as gorgeous as
it is precise.” Ian Duhig
“Michelle McGrane uncovers that which is transitory and ephemeral and lays
it before us in a poetry that is as assured as it is tentative, confident as it is
exploratory. Images flash brightly, voices overlap and the world as we experience
it is transformed by language into ‘something rich and strange’. Here is a poet
who is sensitive to the thin membrane that separates us from each other and from
the past. These remarkable poems act as a touchstone, a way of reassessing and
remaking our perceptions of the world.” Ian Parks

50 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-26-5
 new release

Kerry Hammerton is a poet,

writer and alternative health
practitioner. Her poetry has
been published in Carapace,
New Contrast and New
Coin, online at Litnet and
Incwadi. She has also been
These are the Lies I told you
a contributor to The Empty
Tin Readings (May 2010)
and The Poetry Project.

Kerry Hammerton
“Hammerton’s poetry tells stories we never tire of living and reliving especially
when told new. Her light, sometimes witty, understated control of words, make
this telling deliciously new.” Moira Richards, Cape Times
“Kerry Hammerton is an anatomist of romantic love, from the rumpled hotel
sheets of lust to the shared tattoos of intimacy. With its roller-coaster ride of
erotica, sensuality, heartbreak and laugh out loud hilarity, These are the lies I told
you is a debut volume destined to break sales records in this country. The Marian
Keyes of poetry has arrived.” Finuala Dowling

76 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-22-7
 new release

Ingrid Andersen’s poetry

has been widely published
in local literary magazines.
Her first collection of poems,
Excision, was published in
2005. She is the founding
editor of Incwadi, a South
African online journal of
poetry and photography.

Ingrid Andersen
“Andersen’s poems fuse the best of Imagism with a heartfelt compassion; with
a few well-chosen words, she can turn the rawness and imprecision of emotion
into poems that reach simultaneously for clarity and for the reader’s heart. She
is generous, careful, passionate – all these qualities make her work profound and
accessible. Each poem is a self-contained loveliness.” Fiona Zerbst
“Ingrid Andersen writes poems for an ‘age of loneliness’. With words of powerful
simplicity, this book cuts open the heart and mind of the reader, stitches and
sometimes mends. Darting lightly in and out of life’s small and lonely spaces and
places, her quiet truths offer respite from the world’s noise.” Tania van Schalkwyk
“Meditations on love, loss, family and faith, the poems in Ingrid Andersen’s
second collection gleam with humanity and insight. Like bevelled and burnished
tesserae, each poem in Piece Work combines the vision and precision of dedicated
craftsmanship, contributing to this mosaic of an attentive life.” Michelle McGrane

72 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-07-4
 new release

Beverly Rycroft is a graduate

of UCT and Wits. She
worked as a teacher before
turning full time to writing
and journalism. Her poems
have been published in local
literary magazines such as
Carapace, New Coin and
scrutiny2. Missing is her first
collection of poems.

Beverly Rycroft
“From the first poem, I was drawn in and found myself devouring these poems
hungrily. Rycroft takes the intimate nature of her life and shapes the experience
into deeply-crafted works…Rycroft’s poetry is very accessible, vital and necessary:
a fine debut.” Arja Salafranca, Tonight Online
“This astonishingly moving debut collection reads compellingly as one complete
story. Missing covers the archetypal journey from sickness and near-death
transformation and hope. Rycroft wears her exquisite poetic technique lightly -
though rich in deftly-crafted images, the poems are profoundly inviting, readable,
memorable. I could not put it down.” Finuala Dowling

80 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-06-7
 new release

Melissa Butler lives in Cape

Town and Pittsburgh, PA.
She has a Masters degree in
Curriculum Theory from
Penn State University and a
Masters degree in Creative
Writing from the University of
removing
Cape Town. removing is her
first book of poetry.

Melissa Butler
“In these poems Melissa Butler has the unique ability to take almost anything that
happens to catch her eye or to figure in her mind’s eye—these can range from a
bowl to a hadeda, from the concept of edges to the cusp of a silence—and make
it speak volumes not only about itself, but about us in our human lives. Such are
her poetic gifts; and such is the quality of this remarkable debut.” Stephen Watson
“The experience of reading the poems in removing is, wonderfully, one of a
late-night conversation with a warm, imaginative, thoughtful, observant and
compassionate friend. In pellucid language and deeply satisfying images of the
real, Melissa Butler manages to talk about the great questions of humanity as
lightly and easily as if she were tossing out a picnic blanket.” Finuala Dowling

48 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-19-7
 forthcoming

MEMOIR

Swimming with Cobras

Rosemary Smith
Rosemary Smith could never have im-
agined the trajectory her life would take
the day she met her husband. She would
find herself in Grahamstown, at a crucial
point in South Africa’s struggle. Joining
the Black Sash, the white, women-led
anti-apartheid organisation, of which she
forthcoming would one day become a national vice
president, gave her the opportunity to engage with a coun-
try in, often violent, transition.

Swimming with Cobras is a memoir about a journey to find

a foothold in a foreign land grappling with it’s own identity,
offering rare and important insight into a corner of South
Africa’s past.
Rosemary Smith's life as an activist in the Eastern Cape began when she moved
from England with her South African born husband in the mid 1960s. They made
their home in Grahamstown where they raised four children. As a member of the
Black Sash she participated in events spanning three decades in an intensely politi-
cised and oppressed province. Through her involvement she made the transition to
full integration in a country that at first struck her as alien and strange.
ISBN 978-1-920397-37-1
 forthcoming

MEMOIR FICTION

Words and Flesh Bom Boy

Dawn Garisch Yewande Omotoso
As both a medical doctor and a writer, Leke is a troubled young man living in
Dawn Garisch has lived a split life for the suburbs of Cape Town. He develops
many years. Finally, Words and Flesh: strange habits of stalking people, stealing
Travels in the Eloquent Body allows the small objects and going from doctor to
two streams of her life to converge. doctor in search of companionship rather
than cure. Through a series of letters
Through exploring both the science and written to him by his Nigerian father whom
poetry of the body, she investigates how he has never met, Leke learns about a
we can determine what to trust. She suggests ways of family curse; a curse which his father had unsuccessfully
developing a partnership with oneself, which includes not tried to remove. Bom Boy is a well-crafted, and complex
abusing the very ground we live off and stand on. In an narrative written with a sensitive understanding of both the
engaging manner, Words and Flesh offers a circumspect smallness and magnitude of a single life.
and quiet wisdom in response to the instinctual need to
find out who we are and why we are.

Dawn Garisch is a doctor who writes, a poet who walks, a researcher who dances.
She lives in Cape Town near the mountain and the sea and has two grown sons.
Her last novel, Trespass, was nominated for the Commonwealth Prize in Africa.
Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria with her Nigerian
father, West Indian mother and two older brothers. She and her family moved to
South Africa in 1992 and have lived there ever since. She is an architect; space
and buildings being a passion of hers second only to words and literature. She cur-
rently lives in Cape Town working as a designer, freelance writer and novelist.

ISBN 978-1-920397-39-5 ISBN 978-1-920397-35-7


FICTION
Lambat Street
Saleeha Bhamjee
Saaleha Bhamjee lives in Benoni. She
juggles her time (rarely successfully)
between five children, a bakery and her
computer. Her first book, The Beautiful
Names, was published by Muslim Writer's
Publishing and is available from online
booksellers. She's had short stories
appear on the literary website, LitNet, as
well as in the Many Voices, One Faith Anthology. She's
written several articles for various Islamic publications.
Lambat Street is her first novel.
ISBN 978-1-920397-40-1
forthcoming
FICTION
I'll Tell the Judge
Tracey Farren
The detective says, ‘Just say what you
saw. The judge won’t believe you if you
say more.’ I know what he means, he
means, Stella don’t lie.
The entrance of Jerry into the lives of 12-
year old Stella and her family, changes
everything. He brings with him laughter,
music, excitement, and something far worse – a desire for
revenge. After a series of brutal events, Stella finds herself
in a position where her testimony is all that can convict
Jerry and save her father from imprisonment. In I'll Tell
The Judge, Stella rehearses her statement of what she
saw, as well as what she didn’t see. Presented through the
voice of a child, Tracey Farren is able to convey Stella’s
naїveté as well as the traumatic loss of that innocence.
Tracey Farren lives in Cape Town with four dogs, a surfer and her three children.
She has a psychology honours degree from UCT. She worked as a freelance
journalist before turning to fiction. Her debut novel, Whiplash, was shortlisted for
the Sunday Times Literary Awards 2009.
ISBN 978-1-920397-38-8

POETRY
Beyond the Delivery Room
Khadija Heeger
Khadija Tracey Carmelita Heeger was
born in Cape Town, South Africa, raised on
the Cape Flats in the township of Hanover
Park. She explores poetry as theatre. In
2010 she was commissioned to write a
piece for the Wilvan Spanish and Ballet
Dance school’s Theatrical dance piece
called Dis!place which was performed over
the human rights day weekend at the District Six Museum
in Cape Town. She is currently part of a research team
at District Six Museum around Reminiscence Theatre,
where she is laying the foundations for the production of
her piece Blood Words. Although she has been published
in many publications, this will be Khadija’s first collection
of poems.
ISBN 978-1-920397-36-4
forthcoming
POETRY
Woman Unfolding
Jenna Mervis
Jenna Mervis is a poet and freelance writer
living in Cape Town. Her work has been
featured in several South African journals
including Carapace, Green Dragon, New
Contrast, New Coin and the 2009 PEN
Studzinski Literary Award anthology New
Writing From Africa. Born and schooled
in Durban, Jenna studied Journalism at
Rhodes University and obtained an MA in Creative Writing
from the University of Cape Town. Find her online at http://
designwriting.withtank.com.
This forthcoming book is a debut collection.
ISBN 978-1-920397-33-3
 forthcoming

NON-FICTION

Book of African Names

Phumzile Simelane
Born in Mpumalanga, Phumzile Simelane-
Kalumba, graduated from the University of
Cape Town in 1998 with a BCom degree.
She lived in the North East of England with
her family for 7 years. Whilst there, she
developed interest in South African Bantu
names. She is currently pursuing her
Masters Degree in the Department of Xhosa, University of in print
Western Cape with special interest in onomastics, which is
part of African folklore.

ISBN 978-1-920397-34-0

The Small Publishers’ Catalogue (Africa) is an initiative that
grew out of a meeting held in August 2009 where a number
of Small Publishers met for two days in Johannesburg at
Museum Africa as part of Khanya College’s Winter School.
The Catalogue is intended to showcase the variety and
extent of small publishing in Africa. Because the project
was run on a shoe-string budget with no external funding
apart from the advertising in the catalogue (for which we
are very grateful) it is seen as a first step in developing
an African Small Publishers’ initiative and will hopefully
generate an online catalogue and further editions which
will include more of the small publishers that surely must
exist and thrive in Africa.
96 pp ISBN: 978-1-920397-01-2
in print
Joan Metelerkamp
Joan Metelerkamp is the author of seven
books of poems: Towing the Line (1992),
Stone No More (1995), Into the day
breaking (2000), Floating Islands (2001),
Requiem (2003), Carrying the Fire (2005),
and Burnt Offering (2009).
Burnt Offering is Joan Metelerkamp’s seventh collection
of poems. Like all of Metelerkamp’s work, these generous
poems draw on the details of family and rural life, dreams,
landscapes and journeys and weave together, with her
distinctive energy and passion.
“Burnt Offering is compelling reading, it sweeps one away
like a riptide does.“ Moira Richards, poet and reviewer
“I loved Joan’s collection which I found at once immediately
readable, dazzling, fragile, and formidable. Beautiful
journeys into the need to love, to speak, to understand
and simultaneously to travel beyond the boundaries that
constrain language.” Stacy Hardy, poet and journalist
96 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-4-9

Sindiwe Magona
Sindiwe Magona is a multi-award winning
author of plays, essays, novels, memoirs,
educational books for children and poetry.
Please, Take Photographs is her first col-
lection of poetry.
From the languid innocence of the poems about her village,
to her shattering images of Africa at war, Magona leads
you headlong into her fireside circle where archetypes
flicker like shadows on a face that has seen, and been.
Please, Take Photographs is defiant and tender, horrific
and homely, at once irreverent, outspoken and beautiful.
“Sindiwe Magona has published everything but poetry
– great novels, memoirs, essays, educational books for
children. Now, at the peak of her form, she has unveiled
her poems – the most difficult art form of all to get right,
but like an arrow to the heart when they succeed.” Jane
Raphaely
80 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-5-6
in print
Helen Moffett
Helen Moffett is a freelance editor, author
and academic. She has lectured as far
afield as Trinidad and Alaska, but calls
Cape Town home. Strange Fruit is her first
collection of her own poems.
Strange Fruit is a courageous debut with a remarkable
range in theme and tone, from the nostalgic to the comedic
and the bawdy, from the angry, the melancholic, the
steadfast and the comforting. It will delight, shock, anger,
induce laughter, shock more, delight more. And make you
blush. It’s a full range. There are poems of brutally honest
self-scrutiny – the heart of the collection being a series of
poems on the ageing body, loss of love and infertility – and
there are poems that capture landscapes with imagist skill
and the botanist’s detail.
“Your voice sparkles with humour and passion and is
blessed with intelligence, incredible clarity and verve.”
Yaba Badoe, writer and documentary film-maker, UK
56 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-6-3

Fiona Zerbst
Fiona Zerbst was born in Cape Town in
1969. She has travelled widely and cur-
rently works as a freelance journalist and
lives in Rustenburg. Oleander is her fourth
volume of poetry.
Oleander explores life’s complexities, both beautiful
and poisonous – love, death, art, the aftermath of war
and genocide, travel, religion, revelation. More wide-
ranging than Zerbst’s previous volumes, Oleander charts
experiences through which the self may be transformed.
“In Oleander, Fiona Zerbst’s lyrical voice reveals itself – not
for the first time, she has long been evident as an interpreter
of her private and public worlds — but yet again strongly,
freshly. Her continual reinvention of the self – and self-
consciousness about the frame and objects of the invention
– is perhaps more fully present than in any other young
contemporary poet in South Africa.” Peter Wilhelm
56 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-7-0
in print
Malika Ndlovu
Durban born, Malika Ndlovu is a poet,
performer, and playwright whose works
have been performed both locally and
internationally. She is a founder-member of
the women writers’ collective, WEAVE and
is currently curator of the Africa Centre’s
poetry project, Badilisha!
This book breaks the silence around stillbirth, often seen
as a non-event, something women are expected to “get
over” as soon as possible. Invisible Earthquake is placed
in the wider South African context by Sue Fawcus, who
writes tenderly and expertly about stillbirth from the point
of view of an obstetrician, and by Zubeida Bassadien and
Muriel Johnstone, social workers who accompany women
going through this shattering experience.
“Malika has created a piece of work that gives grief a
voice. I know this will bring solace to all those who read it,
anyone who has lost any loved one will see themselves in
her words.” Joy McPherson, Founder Midwives Inc.
88 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-3-2
 in print

Tracey Farren lives in Cape

Town with four dogs, a
surfer and her three children.
She has a psychology Recipient of
honours degree from UCT.
She worked as a freelance
journalist before turning to
Whiplash White Ribbon Award
in December 2008 from
fiction. Women Demand Dignity
Advocacy Group.

Tracey Farren
An unputdownable, gripping debut novel, a ‘Cinderella’ story about a Muizenberg
(Cape Town) prostitute, Tess, who while being addicted to painkillers and selling
her body on the street finds redemption in unexpected places. Her quirky humour,
honesty and love of beauty save her when she faces tough choices. The book
has heart and a feel-good factor in spite of its gritty and sometimes traumatic
subject matter.
Shortlisted for

Selected as Book of the Month by Adele Hamilton for the www.women24.com

Book Club, “Whiplash had me from page 1”.

Every review so far has praised Whiplash, from describing it as “one of the best
novels to come out of South Africa in several years” to “having the makings of a best
seller” in The Weekender on 19/07/08. Farren is an important new voice, who has
already completed her second novel.
“Brave novel, well worth reading” Janet van Eeden in The Witness
“Ground-breaking novel” Arja Salafranca in The Star, Tonight
ISBN 978-0-9802729-2-5
320 pp
 in print

Na ‘n loopbaan in
verpleegkunde en
gesondheidsnavorsing vestig
Hester van der Walt haar in
McGregor waar sy deesdae
brood bak vir die plaaslike
mark. Sy skryf graag poësie
Hester se Brood
en kortverhale. In 2009 het
Hester se Brood verskyn.

Hester van der Walt

Hester se Brood is ’n eerlike (en heerlike) plat-op-die-aarde boek wat vertel
van die skrywer, Hester van der Walt, se passie vir broodbak. Dit is gesetel in
McGregor in die Klein Karoo – waar sy brood in ’n houtbakoond vir die plaaslike
mark bak – en weerspieël die skrywer se intuïtiewe aanvoeling vir die konneksie
tussen siel en kos, veral kos wat met sorg, volgens tradisionele beginsels en
metodes, voorberei word.

’n Fyn sin vir humor, praktiese wenke en smul-lekker resepte, maak hierdie boek
net so onweerstaanbaar soos die reuk van brood, kraakvars uit die oond.

ISBN 978-0-9802729-8-7
192 pp
 in print

Jane Katjavivi is a writer,

publisher and influential book N am i bian edit ion by T i gerey e P ublis hing
development activist. She
was born in the UK, now a
naturalised Namibian. She
lives in Windhoek with her
husband.
Undisciplined Heart

Jane Katjavivi
When Jane Katjavivi becomes involved in London in support of change in
Southern Africa, she meets and marries a Namibian activist in exile. Moving
with him to Namibia at the time of Independence in 1990, she faces a new life
in a starkly beautiful country. Her husband is made Ambassador to the Benelux
countries and the European Union, and later Berlin, causing Jane to build a
new identity as the wife of an ambassador, and come to terms with her own ill-
health without her friends around her to support her. Set against the backdrop
of the historical, political and social development of newly independent Namibia,
Undisciplined Heart tells the story of Jane’s love for her family, friends and her
adopted country.
“Jane Katjavivi’s frank and intimate memoir of love and politics, of survival and
finding a way to make a home, shows that history is also what heals when it is
filtered through a loving heart and an open mind.” Margie Orford
“Undisciplined Heart is an uplifting and fascinating read. And while it is a detailed
memoir of the birth of a nation on one hand, it is also a tender exploration of one
woman’s personal journey towards enlightenment and wisdom.” Janet van Eeden,
ISBN 978-1-920397-04-3 Litnet
320 pp
 in print

Joanne Hichens

Lauri Kubuitsile
Sponsored by the

The Bed Book of Short Stories

Compiled by Lauri Kubuitsile; edited by Joanne Hichens

A collection of short stories by new and established Southern African women
writers on the theme of Bed.
Joanne Fedler
Karabo Moleke Sylvia Schlettwein
Megan Ross Helen Walne
Ellen Banda-Aaku Marina Chichava Rita Britz
Joanne Hichens Rose Richards
Sarah Margot Saffer
Ginny Swart Romaine Hil
Nia Magoulianiti-McGregor Lotz
Pamela
Newham Isabella Morris
Melissa Gardiner Arja Salafranca Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

Erika Coetzee Bronwyn Jayne Bauling

Luso Katali Mnthali Claudie Muchindi
McLennan
Anne Woodborne Lauri Rosemund Handler Liesl
Kubuitsile Jobson
Gothataone Moeng Tinashe Chidyausiku

Lauri Kubuitsile is a full time writer who lives in Botswana. She has published
children’s and youth books, as well as many short stories. She has won prizes
for her adult short fiction and her youth books.

ISBN 978-1-920397-31-9 Joanne Hichens is a crime fiction writer, editor and journalist. Her books have
312 pp been published locally and abroad. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT.
 in print

Meg Vandermerwe was

born in South Africa in 1978.
She read English at Oxford
University and is a graduate
of the MA in Creative Writing
from the University of East
Anglia. She teaches at UWC
This Place I Call Home
and lives in Cape Town.

Meg Vandermerwe
In this thought-provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others; ten
diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans during our
country’s challenging history. From an old widower who feels that his world is
unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled 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 xenophobia, This
Place I Call Home leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities.
“These brave imaginings take us into the heart-places of South Africans. Through
Vandermerwe’s fine writing we are enabled to talk about home, come home and
perhaps feel at home with(in) one another. ”Antjie Krog
“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.”Ali Smith
“It is rare when a writer accurately captures the hopes and anxieties of an entire
nation but everything is here in This Place I Call Home … Besides her obvious
ISBN 978-1-920397-02-9 versatility as a writer, Vandermerwe’s prose is deeply felt, compassionate and
148 pp sincere.” Hannah Rappleye, Mail and Guardian
 in print

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a

multi-award-winning writer,
performer and editor. She
lives in Johannesburg with
an assortment of animals
and her son. The Everyday Wife

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers

The Everyday Wife is poetry–to-go, a handy little book of practical poetry for any
occasion. Mischievous and profound words recreate reflecting on everyday life
in South Africa and other parts of the world. In this, her second volume of poetry,
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers unravels the security blanket of workaday routines,
exposing the soul of the quotidian.
“What treats are served up in this new book of poems by Phillippa Yaa de
Villiers! Like the best of poets, she makes language do her bidding, wresting
new sense from familiar images and situations,surprising us and ambushing our
expectation. Phillippa Yaa de Villiers illuminates relationships of many kinds and
many intensities – between lovers, children and parents, the politics of emotion
shared and remembered and confronted, sustained across the distance of place
or memory. Sometimes, as in ‘The Organ of Love’ - which manages that crucial
combination of passion and humour – she makes meaning hold on to the last
word of the poem like the last drop of a delicious drink.” Margaret Busby

ISBN 978-1-920397-05-0
92 pp
 in print

Arja Salafranca is an award-

winning, widely published
writer of prose and poetry.
She is the Arts and Lifestyle
editor of The Sunday
Independent. She lives in
Johannesburg.
The Thin Line

Arja Salafranca
The stories in The Thin Line hook the reader from the first one, and reel you
in on that thin line. You will be haunted by the carefully drawn characters:
by Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, by Cleo in love with a married
man after all these years, and poor skinny Mark, as he sees his love teeter
away from him. Salafranca is an accomplished, award-winning writer, this long-
awaited collection is a box of jewels.
“Salafranca’s style in this collection is best described as cinematic. Each story
plays out like a camera lingering on minutiae which, brought together, tell the
reader a great deal about the characters and situations which form the subject
matter… The most striking - and refreshing - aspect of this collection is that it
bears no trace of the albatross that many South African writers find tethered to
their neck: the burden of our past, the issue of “representation”, and the pitfalls of
stereotyping and political correctness.” Tanya Farber, Tonight
“The author tells the reader much about the human condition, about loneliness
and the desperate search for fulfilment in relationships, about “body loneliness”,
about how community dictates how we must look and love… For me the biggest
bonus was that there is a strong consciousness of the structure of the short
ISBN 978-1-920397-08-1 story and an implicit reaction to the tradition of the short story.” Joan Hambidge,
220 pp Die Burger

Azila Talit Reisenberger
Azila Talit Reisenberger is an award win-
ning author who has had poetry and short
stories published internationally and in SA.
She is a senior lecturer in Hebrew & Jewish
Studies at UCT.
Azila Talit Reisenberger is a Bible scholar, a rabbi, a
mother, a wife, and a poet. In all these selves she grapples
with translating her life from Hebrew to English and back
again. Life in Translation is full of wry humour, longing,
bitterness, sweetness, playfulness, and subversions of
traditional meanings and texts – a delightful book that
charms and surprises anew with each reading.
“Not to be heard. Not to be understood. Azila Reisenberger’s
poetry makes us overwhelmingly aware how often we
have to translate ourselves in order to matter.” Antjie Krog
64 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-1-8
in print
Megan Hall
Megan Hall is a graduate of UCT. Her writ-
ings have been widely published in South
African literary magazines. She works in the
publishing industry.
The poems in Megan Hall's debut collection combine
a dark humour and terrible grief with a lightness and
restrained sensuality. Her language has the qualities of
dance: uninhibited and polished, accomplished and vivid.
Fourth Child shows a poet courageously facing deep
feelings while being committed to accurate writing, making
beautiful and living things out of the fabric of loss, grief,
and emptiness.
“The tone of Fourth Child is cautious, carefully muted,
but freighted with much emotion. A concealed sensitivity
is unpeeled, poem by poem, until the reader is left with
a knowledge not held before.” Fiona Zerbst in The Sunday
Independent
56 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-0-1
Modjaji Books' titles are available for purchase as printed
books and e-books from online booksellers Amazon.
com, Kalahari.net; Loot.co.za and many others.

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