As many publishing houses are located in the same country (or even in the same city), it is necessary to zoom in on the country or city you are interested in to see all the publishing houses.
202 bis, boulevard du 13 janvier
BP 3601
Lomé
Togo
Tél: (+228) 22 25 87 55 / (+228) 90 30 55 79
https://www.facebook.com/bdafricaine/
AGO Media is a team of young writers and illustrators brought together by Koffivi ASSEM and KanAd for the production and distribution of comics and animated films. AGO Media is composed of a publishing house, a communication agency and a production and distribution company for books and films.
Lomé-based AGO publishing wants to make up for the lack of publishing houses specialized in children’s books and comics in Africa.
Before the official foundation of the company in 2011, AGO started with the publication of fanzines: “AGO fiction” and “AGO drama”. This is how the company’s strategy was defined: to fund the publishing wing through the communication agency, to diversify the revenues by venturing into multimedia and cinema and especially to create an authentic distribution circuit.
To read:
KANAD
Au commencement tous les animaux vivaient tous dans le même village, tous les hommes dans un autre. Avec Ziguidi, un enfant prodige, tout cela va changer. Le livre contient aussi un abécédaire sur les animaux.
2012 - 31 pages - 21 X 21 cm - 6 € - ISBN : 979-10-90810-03-7
Collection “Le petit griot”
Koffivi ASSEM & KANAD
À la suite du terrible tremblement de terre qui ébranle Haïti on 2010, un enfant de rue, habitué à se débrouiller, décide de prendre soin de deux orphelins. Mais c’est au moment où il arrive à obtenir leur confiance et affection, qu’il est enlevé. Haïti mon amour est le premier tome des aventures de P’tit Filou.
2012 - 42 pages - 21 X 29,7 cm - 10 € - ISBN : 979-10-90810-00-6
Collection “BD Junior”
Joël ADOTEVI, KANAD, Gilka, Koffivi ASSEM, Anani ACCOH, Adomayakpo Daté PAPI
Six récits pour faire voyager petits et grands dans l’histoire, les imaginaires de l’Afrique. Dans ce premier tome, visitez le Nigéria, le Togo, le Bénin, le Ghana et le Mali, pour découvrir des cosmogonies, des épopées, des légendes urbaines et des faits ou personnages historiques comme Shango, Sogolon la femme buffle, le roi Agokoli, les amazones du Dahomey et les terribles Ablafo.
2015 - 48 pages - 10 € -
Collection “Afrique en BD”
Contact : Koffivi ASSEM
Responsable : KanAd
401 Richmond Street West, #277
Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8
Canada
Tél: +(416) 535-9914
www.btlbooks.com
Between the Lines (BTL) was established in 1977 and is a fiercely independent small press. At BTL we remain committed to our original mandate: to publish Canadian-authored non-fiction on a broad range of social and cultural issues from a progressive perspective. Our corresponding mission is to provide high quality resources that promote equitable social change. We specialize in informative, non-fiction books on politics and public policy, social issues, Canadian and world history, international development, Indigenous issues, gender/sexuality, critical race issues, labour and work, environment, and media. BTL books amplify the voices that often go unheard in the mainstream and challenge our readers to think differently. Our Editorial Committee makes publishing decisions democratically by consensus.
Between the Lines asks people to read critically, to think about the world differently, and not to get stuck in factional party lines.
Read here the interview with Amanda Crocker, published in partnership with ActuaLitté (January 16, 2018).
David AUSTIN
In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and activists from Canada, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean–people like C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Miriam Makeba, Rocky Jones, and Walter Rodney. Within months of the Congress, a Black-led protest at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) exploded on the front pages of newspapers across the country–raising state security fears about Montreal as the new hotbed of international Black radical politics.
Fear of a Black Nation won the 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize in Caribbean Literature in English or Creole and was a silver medalist in the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Awards - Best Regional Non-Fiction (Canada-East).
2013; 256 pages; 152 x 228 mm;
ISBN (Paperback): 9781771130103 | $34.95 CAD
ISBN (Digital): 9781771130110 | $23.95 CAD
Stephen D’ARCY
“What we must see,” Martin Luther King once insisted, “is that a riot is the language of the unheard.” In this new era of global protest and popular revolt, Languages of the Unheard draws on King’s insight to address a timely and controversial topic: the ethics and politics of militant resistance.
Using vivid examples from the history of militancy—including armed actions by Weatherman and the Red Brigades, the LA Riots, the Zapatista uprising, the Mohawk land defence at Kanesatake, the Black Blocs at summit protests, the occupations of Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park, the Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz, the Quebec Student Strike, and many more—this book will be of interest to democratic theorists and moral philosophers, and practically useful for protest militants attempting to grapple with the moral ambiguities and political dilemmas unique to their distinctive position.
Stephen D’Arcy is an associate professor of philosophy at Huron University College, Western University. A long-time social activist and protest organizer, he teaches and writes about democratic theory and practical ethics.
2013; 232 pages; 152 x 228 mm;
ISBN (Paperback): 9781771131063 | $24.95 CAD
ISBN (Digital): 9781771131070 | $17.50 CAD
Karen MESSING
In 1978, when workers at a nearby phosphate refinery learned that the ore they processed was contaminated with radioactive dust, Karen Messing, then a new professor of molecular genetics, was called in to help. Unsure of what to do with her discovery that exposure to the radiation was harming the workers and their families, Messing contacted senior colleagues but they wouldn’t help. Neither the refinery company nor the scientific community was interested in the scary results of her chromosome studies.
Over the next decades Messing encountered many more cases of workers around the world—factory workers, cleaners, checkout clerks, bank tellers, food servers, nurses, teachers—suffering and in pain without any help from the very scientists and occupational health experts whose work was supposed to make their lives easier. Arguing that rules for scientific practice can make it hard to see what really makes workers sick, in Pain and Prejudice Messing tells the story of how she went from looking at test tubes to listening to workers.
Karen Messing is an award-winning (including a Governor General of Canada award and YWCA (Montreal) Women of Distinction) and internationally recognized expert on occupational health. She is the author of more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific articles and the book One-eyed Science: Occupational Health and Working Women. She is also the editor of Integrating Gender in Ergonomic Analysis, which has been translated into six languages.
2014; 168 pages; 152 x 228 mm;
ISBN (Paperback): 9781771131476 | $24.95 CAD
ISBN (Digital): 9781771131483 | $17.50 CAD
Contact : Amanda CROCKER
Éditions Papyrus Afrique, founded and directed by Seydou Nourou Ndiaye, is a Francophone publishing house, publishing mainly in African languages. Its mission is the development of modern literature in national languages. Since its creation in 1996, Papyrus has published more than 130 books published in West African languages. Having a large readership in the region and in the European and US diasporas, Éditions Papyrus Afrique also publishes a monthly newsletter in Wolof and Pulaar Lasli/ Njelbean.
Éditions Papyrus Afrique were the recipients of the Alioune Diop Prize for the Promotion of Publishing in Africa in 2002. They were also the first to be awarded the National Prize for the Promotion of Publishing in Africa in Senegal, in 2005.
Read: “Notre objectif est d’arriver à une coordination entre éditions africaines”, interview with Seydou Nourou Ndiaye, Liberté Algérie, 13 November, 2019
Léopold Sédar SENGHOR ; Wally FAYE (trad.)
A Pind Seenoor est une revue explicative et panoramique des poèmes de Senghor, avec en annexe leur traduction intégrale en sérère, langue maternelle de l’auteur. L’analyste et traducteur Wally Faye, ingénieur informaticien de formation, a noué une relation de profonde complicité avec Senghor, qu’il a connu de son vivant. Cette belle traduction en sérère a l’avantage de faire revenir le poète auprès des siens. Parmi les poèmes traduits se trouve Chants d’ombres, Hosties noires et Éthiopiques.
Décembre 2014 ; 164 pages ; 13,5 x 21 cm ; ISBN : 978-2-914135-23-8
Abdullaye JAH
Booy Pullo campe la déchéance d’un jeune paysan qui quitte son village pour aller en France. Il passe par Dakar, s’y enlise, se confronte aux difficultés et au sida. Le roman nous donne une photographie saisissante, de l’intérieur des mégapoles africaines. Booy Pullo est d’abord un roman d’espoir qui invite la jeunesse rurale africaine à se battre sur place et à servir son pays.
Abdullaye JAH, enseignant et journaliste, a choisi de s’installer dans son village natal. Il y dirige une radio communautaire et se consacre à l’écriture.
Décembre 2014 ; 110 pages ; 13,5 x 21 cm ; ISBN : 978-2-914135-21-4
Professeur Aboubacry MOUSSA LAM
La connaissance est le personnage central de ce roman en pulaar dont la portée équivaut à une œuvre de recherche classique.
Le noir a pendant longtemps fait l’objet d’un regard peu valorisant. Ce sort va pousser Ganndal (la connaissance) a démêler l’écheveau. Il va faire découvrir au noir qu’il est à l’origine des premières conquêtes : État, écriture, religion… Alors, les échafaudages, laborieusement construits contre lui autour des questions telles que celle de la place de la femme et celle de l’enfant, les droits de l’individu au regard de ceux du groupe, tombent.
Ce roman est un raccourci extraordinaire qui permet d’accéder à certains aspects de l’histoire de l’humanité pour tout lecteur capable de lire la langue pulaar dans le texte. Ce roman est retenu pour être traduit en français et dans d’autres langues africaines.
Son auteur, le Professeur Aboubacry MOUSSA LAM, est professeur titulaire à l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. Cet égyptologue qui a été l’assistant de feu Cheikh Anta DIOP en est à son troisième ouvrage édité aux Éditions Papyrus Afrique.
208 pages ; 13 X 21 cm ; ISBN : 978-2-914135-13-9
Contact : Seydou Nourou NDIAYE
Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road
Oxford, OX4 1JE
United Kingdom
Tél: +44 (0)1865 403156 / +44 (0)1865 403345
www.newint.org
An independent, not-for-profit media co-operative, New Internationalist is a voice that empowers. We tell the stories that the mainstream media sidestep and offer a platform for the people living those stories. Our award-winning magazine, books and website set the agenda for a radically fairer future, promote global justice and campaign for the disadvantaged all over the world.
New Internationalist books span activism, current affairs, children’s and adult fiction, education, ethical living, photography and world food.
We used to be called the Internationalist. We became the New Internationalist in 1973! New perspectives on what it means to be a global citizen are needed now as much as ever. Internationalism guides everything we do as we believe in the interdependency of all people and all things. Now with our recent merger with Myriad our mission is to explore new ways of seeing.
Ruth WALTON
An educational resource to help children explore the issue of fair trade by allowing them to see through the eyes of the children of banana farmers in the Windward Islands. The author spent time with the farmers’ families and she uses the real-life narratives of two young children going about their daily activities to show how bananas grow, problems such as hurricanes which can affect the crop, how they are picked and transported and how they end up in our stores.
The main story is illustrated with colorful collages made from painted textures and photographs from the Islands. Interspersed in the story are boxes with maps, facts and photos giving more detail on the places and methods and challenges. Its ends with banana recipes and ’bigger picture’ descriptions, maps and photos of where bananas come from and examples of social premium funded projects.
With plenty of points for discussion Juliana’s Bananas will give girls and boys an insight into the lives of children like them in the Caribbean and how fair trade premiums help communities all over the world build better living conditions.
Ruth WALTON is skilled in many areas of book design, including illustration, layout and typography. She produces educational books using a combination of letterpress, illustration, collage and photography. She illustrated the “Let’s Find Out series” for Franklin WATTS.
September 2014 - pages: 32 - 212 x 178 mm (landscape) - price: £8.99 / £9.95 - ISBN: 978-1-78026-1-805 (eBook ISBN: 978-1-78026-181-2)
Richard SWIFT
An investigation of the alternatives to capitalism, including socialism, anarchism and deep ecology.
Financial collapse and crisis; disgust at bankers’ greed; the devastating effects of yawning inequality: all these and more have led to widespread dissatisfaction and disenchantment with capitalism. people are crying out for an alternative but are continually told that one does not exist.
Richard SWIFT proves this to be wrong with style and assurance. With capitalism vulnerable and out-of-step in the wake of financial crises this book investigates the alternatives that are on offer - including socialism, social democracy, anarchism, ecology and degrowth.
Combining the practical with the visionary, he shows that finding alternatives to capitalism is no longer an academic issue for the left – it is an urgent planetary necessity.
Richard SWIFT is a former editor of New Internationalist magazine and author of the “No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy”. In 2011 he won the Daniel Singer Millenium Prize for an original essay which helps further socialist ideas.
April 2014 - pages: 208 - 216 x 138 mm (paperback) - price: £9.99 / $16.95 - ISBN: 9781780261706 (eBook ISBN: 978-1-78026-171-3)
Peter HUDSON
The author has been visiting the same village in Mauritania on the remote edge of the Sahara for over twenty years. This is the story of his most recent journey there – an intense and engaging day-by-day account through which global change and inequality are made human.
The Sahel – the ‘shore’ of the Sahara – is where cultures, customs and climates meet, merge and clash. Through the numerous characters we meet and from the obviously deep and sympathetic nature of the relationship the author has with the local people, with whom he now runs agricultural projects, we learn of the realities of life in one of the harshest, most marginalised and but also quietly inspiring corners of the world.
Searingly honest and refreshing, this is a superbly written piece of travel writing about a little-known part of the world. The author gets under the surface and gives a sensitive account of what life is like. He understands not just the culture and complex social dealings but also how economics and geo-political forces that can profoundly affect the lives of individuals in a remote community.
Illustrated with maps and line drawings “Under An African Sky” is a unique journey – for the armchair traveller and those interested in development, climate change and global politics and economics.
Peter HUDSON runs an international development charity based in Mauritania in West Africa. He has travelled widely in the region and has written several books including “Leaf in the Wind”, “Travels in Mauritania” and “Two Rivers”.
September 2014 - pages: 240 - 216 x 138 mm (paperback) - price: £9.99 / $16.95 - ISBN: 978-1-78026-178-2 (eBook ISBN: 978-1-78026-179-9)
Calle 2 número 21
San Pedro de los Pinos
03800 México, D.F.
Mexico
Tél: +(52 55) 5515 1657
www.edicionesdelermitano.com
Ediciones del Ermitaño, Editorial Division of Solar Servicios Editoriales, is backed by the experience and prestige of over 29 years in the market and a growing collection of poetry, short stories, novels, and other genres. When the possibility of using digital technology emerged in the editorial world, Ediciones del Ermitaño was the first to create a collection that fully takes advantage of that technology. And so “Minimalia”, our main collection, was born, in which we have published over 250 titles and which has sold thousands of copies. We never run out of any title, since we have the capacity to reprint according to the needs and demand; this has allowed us to open the doors to many young writers who have been able to publish their first, and very promising, works, side by side with the accomplished writers that also are part of our catalog. Thus, the “Minimalia” collection has been a pioneer and a platform for experimentation that established the example and marked new guidelines. It is a collection that explores and explodes the new digital technologies surrounding composition and production, in order to create new paradigms that carry the word from the authors to ultimately thousands of readers.
Contact : Alejandro ZENKER
13, rue de Vaucouleurs
75011 Paris
France
Tél: +33 (0)1 43 14 03 94
www.fontaineolivres.com
Since 2007, Fontaine O Livres’ network of independent book professionals has been promoting contemporary creativity by encouraging synergies between book actors and entrepreneurs. Advice and support for business creation and project development, a coworking and meeting space for book and cultural actors, professional training adapted to the specificities of the written word, networking and sharing for its members, the association places people, sharing and competence at the heart of its activities.
Fontaine O Livres is an observer member of the Alliance.
Contact : Gaëlle BOHE
4 rue Imilchil – CIL
Casablanca 20200
Morocco
Tél: +21 25 22 36 68 43
www.editionsdusirocco.wixsite.com/accueil
Sirocco publishing was created in 2007 in Casablanca to support, unearth, and amplify Moroccan voices of yesterday or today. Their editorial choices are essentially guided by a passion for Morocco, its history, its heritage, its culture in its various expressions, without excluding other perspectives from the southern Mediterranean. Their list, including some co-publishing projects, is francophone and generalist. It is unique in that it reflects the enthusiasm of discoveries and encounters, built at their own pace. Recipient in 2013 of the Grand Atlas Prize (category Francophone essays) awarded to one of their publications, Sirocco Publishing now also publishes literature.
Sirocco parce que comme le vent (plutôt appelé « chergui » au Maroc mais la consonance du mot Sirocco me plaisait mieux), nos titres viennent « du sud » (de la Méditerranée, leurs auteurs ou leurs thèmes), et j’espère qu’ils soufflent chaud.
Read here the interview with Karine Joseph, published in partnership with ActuaLitté (February 10, 2017)
Kenza SEFRIOUI
« Une étude pionnière consacrée à une revue maghrébine » [Salim Jay] qui questionne une période essentielle de l’histoire du Maroc.
Créée à Rabat en mars 1966 par un petit groupe de jeunes poètes d’expression française, Souffles a été, tout au long de ses sept années d’existence, une tribune singulière dans le paysage de la presse marocaine, en évoluant du laboratoire d’écriture, où les lecteurs découvrirent notamment Tahar Ben Jelloun ou Mohammed Khaïr- Eddine, à l’engagement culturel et politique.
Avec son projet de restructuration de la culture nationale, elle a porté un véritable mouvement littéraire et intellectuel, avant de devenir la tribune du mouvement marxiste-léniniste. Disparue en 1972, après l’arrestation d’Abdellatif Laâbi et d’Abraham Serfati, son histoire, retracée au travers des textes et des témoignages de ses contributeurs, montre que sa vision moderniste et progressiste invitait à des questionnements toujours d’actualité.
4è de couverture (extrait)
… cette revue, qui aurait pu vivre la vie tranquille d’un cénacle de poètes et d’artistes… a réussi, elle, en une série d’avancées de la conscience, à opérer deux ruptures essentielles : l’une dans le champ culturel et esthétique, l’autre dans le champ politique… »
Abdellatif Laâbi (Extrait de la préface)
Kenza SEFRIOUI, née à Paris en 1979, est journaliste et critique littéraire. Responsable pendant cinq ans de la rubrique littéraire du magazine marocain Le Journal hebdomadaire, elle collabore aujourd’hui notamment au site des cultures méditerranéennes Babelmed, et milite pour le développement culturel au Maroc.
De sa thèse de doctorat en littérature comparée consacrée à Souffles, elle donne aujourd’hui une étude rigoureuse en même temps qu’un récit passionnant qui plonge le lecteur au cœur de la revue et de ses engagements « ardents ».
Mars 2013 - 458 pages - 15 x 22 cm - broché - 90 MAD - ISBN : 978-9954-9187-0-8
Essai
Textes recueillis à Marrakech et traduits par Doctoresse LÉGEY
« J’ai recueilli tous ces contes à Marrakech. Plus heureuse que nombre de folkloristes qui ont dû s’adresser à des intermédiaires, j’ai fait ma récolte directement dans les principaux harems de Marrakech, sur la place de Jâma ‘el-Fna ‘, auprès des conteurs publics ou dans mon cabinet, où venaient s’asseoir et causer Si El-Hasan ou Lalla ‘Abbouch.
Je transcrivais ces contes en français, au fur et à mesure qu’ils m’étaient
contés et, ensuite, pour être bien sûre de n’avoir fait aucune erreur d’interprétation, oublié aucune expression particulière, je les redisais à mon tour en arabe à mes conteurs. Je puis donc affirmer que la version que je donne est aussi près que possible du conte entendu. »
D. LÉGEY (extrait de la 4e de couverture)
Mme LÉGEY, médecin au Maroc à partir de 1910 et pendant plus de 25 ans, y a soigné des milliers de personnes et contribué à installer des dispensaires et maternités dans plusieurs villes du pays. Par sa collecte de contes et légendes, aux sources les plus authentiques, leur traduction et leur publication, elle permet aux francophones d’accéder à l’imaginaire d’un peuple.
« Apprentie folkloriste », comme elle se définissait elle-même, Mme Légey participe aussi à la préservation d’un riche patrimoine. (En 2001, l’espace culturel de la place Jemaa el-Fna de Marrakech a été proclamé par l’UNESCO : chef-d’œuvre du patrimoine oral et immatériel de l’humanité.)
Parution Maroc : novembre 2007 ; 2è tirage : janvier 2010 - réédition, édition originale 1926 - 368 pages - 13,5 x 21 cm - 18 € - ISBN : 978-9954-8851-0-2
Hanane OULAÏLLAH JAZOUANI (texte et illustrations)
À vous de voter les enfants !
À Fanidi, petit village du Maroc, une élection est organisée pour choisir le maire junior. Pour qui voteras-tu ?
Collection “p’tit citoyen (… deviendra grand !)”
Une collection qui propose aux enfants de réfléchir à la vie ensemble, de se préparer à devenir un citoyen responsable : se préoccuper, se comporter et agir selon l’intérêt commun.
Des messages essentiels, la notion de citoyenneté, ses enjeux, au travers d’histoires et d’activités qui font, doucement et joliment, grandir.
Des livres gaiement illustrés pour que lire et réfléchir riment aussi avec plaisir !
Hanane OULAÏLLAH JAZOUANI est une jeune auteur et illustratrice franco-marocaine, née en Normandie après que ses parents aient quitté le Maroc dans les années 1970 pour commencer une nouvelle vie en France. Après des études artistiques en Grande-Bretagne, Hanane décide de s’installer à Casablanca. Elle y travaille comme journaliste et crée les personnages des Mounikettes, exposés dans plusieurs villes du Maroc ainsi qu’en France, et également publiés dans la presse marocaine. En 2011, elle a remporté le 1er prix du concours littéraire « Une mer de mots ».
32 pages - 17 illustrations, dont une à colorier - 60 MAD - ISBN : 978-9954-494-12-7
Disponible en français et en arabe - à partir de 7 ans
Contact : Karine JOSEPH
Box 121, Rondebosch, 7701
Cape Town
South Africa
Tél: +27 72 77435 46
www.modjajibooks.co.za
Modjaji Books is an independent feminist press that publishes southern African women writers. Modjaji Books fills a gap by providing a platform for serious and ground-breaking writing by new and established women writers with brave voices. We publish short stories, novels, memoir, biography, poetry, essays, narrative non-fiction, reference books and relevant non-fiction.
The history of publishing in South Africa is enmeshed with the culture of resistance that flourished under apartheid. Struggle literature may have emerged from the underground, but women’s voices and particularly black women’s voices – are still marginalized. Modjaji Books addressed this inequality by publishing books that are true to the spirit of Modjaji, the rain queen: a powerful female force for good, new life and regeneration.
In a few short years, Modjaji titles have won a number of prizes or been short-listed for prizes. The prizes include the Ingrid Jonker prizes for debut poetry, short-listings for the Sunday Times fiction prize, several SALA prizes as well as a short-listing for the Caine Prize.
Modjaji is the name of the Rain Queen in the northern part of South Africa. As South Africa is mostly a dry country - rain is very important!
Read here an interview of Colleen HIGGS, Read African Books (African Books Collective).
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.
Praise from Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor of African Literature, Wits University:
“ ‘A stroke on one hemisphere of the brain crosses over to manifest … on the opposite side of the body’.
What does it mean to find oneself suddenly living at this lethal crossing? This exquisite book illuminates how to live with and beyond loss. A superb filigree of acute and finely-crafted pieces, Hemispheres narrates the journey of re-composing life, joy and love from the ‘foreign citadel’ of a body made alien through stroke.
Wry, ironic, comic, joyous, desolate, celebratory, surreal, this mosaic of feeling reconfigures love from loss; each subtle fragment a tessera against time.
As the pieces delve deep into the self, they reach beyond it. The rehabilitation hospital reeks of personal loss even as it becomes a microcosm of contemporary South Africa. Broken bodies deformed by carnage and violence accumulate in the ward. The medical hierarchy enacts deep-seated forms of South African authoritarianism, the losses of the past inflicted and self-inflicted in petty and cruel ways.
The book becomes a quiet odyssey of affirming life in the face of death. The pieces themselves, weightless and profound, light and dark, half and whole, mirror the contradictions of wrenching life from loss.”
Praise from Joanne Fedler:
“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 and celebrates it in others.”
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) creative nonfiction. Karen had a stroke in 2001, from which she has partially recovered. She lives in Johannesburg.
Publication date: May 2011 - 88 pages - format:136 x 210 mm - price: R145 - ISBN: 978-1-920397-24-1
Jennifer THORPE (author and editor) - the contributors include: Jen THORPE, Karabo KGOLENG (well known radio and media personality), Sarah BRITTEN, and Dorothy BLACK, as well as many other women.
Do you remember your first time?
As women, we all have a story within us about a sexual experience that was unforgettable. Perhaps it was incredible, earth shattering, life-changing, and wonderful. Perhaps it wasn’t romantic or pleasurable, but awkward, painful or forced upon us. Many of us have kept our experiences secret because, by exposing our stories, we expose ourselves and our feelings around sex.
In My First Time, Southern African women have shared their stories about their significant first time experiences of sex and sexuality. This is a collection of honest, powerful, and brave accounts. Some joyful, others funny and some heartbreaking, but all of them important for women, and hopefully men, to read.
This is the perfect book for you to read to reflect on your own first times. This is the perfect book to share with your mother, siblings, and friends.
Jennifer THORPE is a feminist writer. She’s passionate about sharing women’s stories and women’s writing. She is the creator and curator of stories for the My First Time project and the editor of FeministsSA.com. Jennifer has an MA in Politics from Rhodes University and is studying towards an MA in Creative Writing at UCT. She lives in Cape Town with her boyfriend Mike and her two cats.
Publication date: September 2012 - 174 pages - format: 136 X 210 mm - price: R160 - ISBN: 978-1-920590048
Yewande OMOTOSO
Praise for Bom Boy from Nuruddin Farah, author of Links, Knots & Crossbones:
"This is a novel bursting with elegance, written by a young author
brimming with genuine promise. Yewande Omotoso is a stylist with a
literary vision."
Praise for Bom Boy from Joanne Hichens, author of Divine Justice:
’Bom Boy surprises and delights, sings at turns, as it straddles the past and the present, bringing into focus cultural beliefs while examining the intimacies and complexities of bonds of family and friendship. What strikes me most is the originality. This fine debut, firmly rooted in contemporary consciousness, is story-telling of note which whets the appetite for more.’
Leke is a troubled young man living in the suburbs of Cape Town. He develops strange habits of stalking people, stealing small objects and going from doctor to doctor in search of companionship rather than cure. Through a series of letters written to him by his Nigerian father whom he has never met, Leke learns about a family curse; a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Bom Boy is a well-crafted and complex narrative written with a sensitive understanding of both the smallness and magnitude of a single life.
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 currently lives in Cape Town working as a designer, freelance writer and novelist.
Publication date: September 2011 - 272 pages - format: 135 X 210 mm - price: R180 - ISBN: 978-1-920397-35-7
Contact : Colleen HIGGS
Graines de Pensées publishing aims to contribute to the cultural expression of Africa, to the development of critical thinking and of a democratic and pluralistic society through the book.
They are concerned with offering accessible books to African children, adapted to their realities and aspirations and of impeccable editorial quality. In addition, for a better dissemination of the book, they participate in co-publishing projects with partners from the South and the North. They also work for synergies with institutions and companies for a better promotion of the book in French and African languages.
Graines de Pensées publishing started their activities in 2005 with a solid editorial experience and broad network of contacts in the French and English editorial sectors through the International Organization of the Francophonie, the African Training Centre for Publishing and Dissemination (CAFED), the Network of African Publishers (APNET) and the Afrilivres Association.
Contact : Yasmin ISSAKA-COUBAGEAT
Box 45095
SE - 104 30 Stockholm
Sweden
Tél: (+46-08) 32 30 80
www.ferdosi.com
Based in Stockholm and founded in 1984, Ferdosi has, in addition to being a publisher, been a key distributor and supplier of books and periodicals.
We cooperate with publishers and distributors throughout the world in order to provide individual and organizational clients with their requests and demands, through our contact services and multilingual website. Ferdosi has a broad list of Persian books published throughout the past 30 years by a range of publishers outside Iran. The list is available on Ferdosi´s website and can be searched by the title, name of the writer, etc.
Ferdosi works with libraries worldwide as a main supplier for minority languages published outside the country of origin. Individual customers equally benefit from our service through Ferdosi´s website.
As a publisher, Ferdosi has published valuable books in Persian and Swedish, mostly dealing with Persian literature, or informative texts about Iran and the Middle East.
Ferdosi publishes a Persian-Swedish magazine under the title of Norrsken (Northern Light), which is intended to be a step toward preserving Persian literature and culture among Farsi speaking and non-Iranians interested in Persian language and culture.
Ferdosi is the name of Iranian national poet who wrote the famous book for Shahnameh to rescue Persian language from Arabic influence.
PO Box 105
Mission Beach
Queensland 4852
Australia
Tél: +61 418 506 645
www.spinifexpress.com.au
Spinifex is an independent feminist press publishing innovative and controversial feminist books with an optimistic edge. Spinifex, our namesake, is an Australian desert grass that holds the earth together. We publish broadly, with a focus on ecology, development, Indigenous and human rights issues in our non-fiction titles, and world stories in our fiction and poetry. We are also at the forefront of digital publishing, with many of our titles available as eBooks.
Spinifex is an Australian desert grass that holds the earth together.
Read here the interview with Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein, published in partnership with ActuaLitté (June 25, 2018).
Merlinda BOBIS
1987. The Philippine government fights a total war against insurgency. The village of Iraya is militarised. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her twelve-metre hair, Estrella, the Fish-Hair Woman, trawls corpses from the water that tastes of lemon grass. She falls in love with the Australian Tony McIntyre who disappears in the conflict. Ten years later, his son travels to Manila to find his father.
How much can the heart accommodate? Death and love, an enemy and a sweetheart, war and an impassioned serenade, and more. Only four chambers but with infinite space like memory, where there is room even for those whom we do not love.
Awards
Winner: 2014 Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Foreign Language
Winner: 2013 Most Underrated Book Award
Finalist: 2013 Davitt Awards. Best Crime and Mystery Books by Australian Women
“As I was reading my thoughts kept turning to Wide Sargasso Sea. It shares with Jean Rhys’s masterpiece more than just a threat to topple into tragedy, but Fish-Hair Woman takes a wider view. It is a love story, a murder mystery, a story about family and a story about the impact of the kind of self-perpetuating government corruption that so often befalls a country in political turmoil. It’s ambitious and sprawling, and things could quickly go wrong. Fortunately, they don’t. Bobis is a talented, passionate writer who is unafraid of exploring the storytelling potential of the novel.”
–Tristan Foster, Verity LA
Published by Spinifex, co-edition with Anvil Press, Philippines; Translation into Spanish by JC Sáez Editor, Chile (2017).
2011 - 232 x 154 mm - 303 pp - AUD$29.95 - ISBN: 9781876756970
khulud kHAMIS
Jewellery designer, Maisoon, wants an ordinary extraordinary life, which isn’t easy for a tradition-defying, activist, Palestinian citizen of Israel, who refuses to be crushed by the feeling that she is an unwelcome guest in the land of her ancestors. Frustrated by the apathy of her boyfriend Ziyad and her father Majid—who want her to get on with her life and forget those in the Occupied Territories—she lashes out, only to discover her father isn’t the man she thought he was.
Raised a Christian, in a relationship with a Muslim man and enamoured with a Palestinian woman from the Occupied Territories, Maisoon must decide her own path.
khulud khamis unpacks the multiple layers of culture, religion, sexuality, politics, feminism and nationalism in the hope of gathering the fragmented pieces of the past and reclaiming the lost contiguity of being Palestinian.
—Samah Sabawi, Palestinian playwright and commentator
... khulud khamis has the rare gift of speaking directly to a reader’s soul; this radiant novel shows just what can happen when women challenge the limits of their world. —Sharon Olinka, author of The Good City
khulud khamis is a Palestinian feminist writer, born to a Slovak mother and a Palestinian father. She holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Haifa and works in the field of social change organizations. She is a member of the feminist organization Isha L’Isha – Haifa Feminist Center. She lives in Haifa with her daughter. This is her first novel.
Published by Spinifex Press; co-edition with New Internationalist UK; Italian translation FILA37 (2015); Turkish translation Gulduniya (2017).
2015 - 192 pp - ISBN: 9781742199009
Fiction
Susan HAWTHORNE
In a globalised world, megacorp publishing is all about numbers, about sameness, about following a formula based on the latest megasuccess. Each book is expected to pay for itself and all the externalities of publishing such as offices and CEO salaries.
It means that books which take off slowly but have long lives, the books that change social norms, are less likely to be published.
Independent publishers are seeking another way. A way of engagement with society and methods that reflect something important about the locale or the niche they inhabit. Independent and small publishers are like rare plants that pop up among the larger growth but add something different, perhaps they feed the soil, bring colour or scent into the world.
Bibliodiversity is a term invented by Chilean publishers in the 1990s as a way of envisioning a different kind of publishing. In this manifesto, Susan Hawthorne provides a scathing critique of the global publishing industry set against a visionary proposal for organic publishing. She looks at free speech and fair speech, at the environmental costs of mainstream publishing and at the promises and challenges of the move to digital.
Susan Hawthorne has worked in the book industry for more than 30 years as a writer, festival organiser, reviewer, editor, publisher and mentor. In 1991, she co-founded Spinifex Press with Renate Klein, after working for Penguin Australia for four years. She has written extensively about the industry, co-organised digital training for small and large publishers, taught Publishing Studies and Creative Writing, and has been an active member of peak bodies for publishers and writers. From 2011 to 2016, she was the English-language Coordinator for the International Alliance of Independent Publishers based in Paris. She is Adjunct Professor in the Writing Program at James Cook University and Publisher at Spinifex Press.
Bibliodiversity can be read as a manifesto for the defence and promotion of diversity in all its forms, but also as a master class in ethics.—JUAN CARLOS SÁEZ C., Director Gerente, JC Sáez Editor, Chile
This publication should be mandatory reading for anyone within the publishing industry.—MARY MASTERS, General Manager, Small Press Network, Australia
2014 - 104 pp - ISBN: 9781742199306
Non-Fiction
Rights: World. Published by Spinifex Press; Canadian rights sold to Fernwood Publishing; Translations into Arabic: December 2015, Tunisia, Éditions Med Ali, Arabic; Syria, Atlas Publishing, Arabic; Egypt, Elain Publishing, Arabic; Lebanon, Dar-Alfarabi and Arab Diffusion. French, 2016: France, Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer; Switzerland, éditions d’en bas; Benin, Éditions Ruisseaux d’Afrique; Mali, Éditions Jamana; Cameroun, Presses universitaires d’Afrique ; Spanish, 2017: Chile, JC Sáez; Mexico, Trilce Ediciones; Uruguay: Ediciones Trilce; also publishers in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia. German, 2017, Verbrecher Verlag.
Contact : Susan HAWTHORNE
Responsable : Renate KLEIN
Rua de Santana, 198 Loja – Centro
Rio de Janeiro - RJ 20 230-261
Brazil
Tél: (+55) 21 2508-9517
www.contracapa.com.br
Founded in 1992 in Copacabana, the Contra Capa bookstore initiated its publishing activities in 1996. First based on the areas of interest of the bookstore itself, these activities have diversified and now include fine arts, photography, cinema, psychoanalysis, anthropology, economy, sociology, history, literary criticism and poetry. The main objective is to produce books that combine interdependence between text and pictures, in the light of the continuous technological changes related to producing and disseminating knowledge and information.
Fernando VELOSO, Sergio GUIMARÃES FERREIRA (orgs.)
Este importante livro mostra que é possível alcançar redução expressiva da violência armada, da insegurança e da criminalidade que aterrorizam a população de grandes áreas urbanas do Brasil. Seus autores mostram – com fatos e não vagos discursos – que isso não se trata de uma esperança insensata. Não apenas porque foi alcançado em Nova York, Boston, Bogotá e várias outras cidades do mundo, mas principalmente porque, no Brasil, reduziu-se a violência em lugares em que isso era mais improvável: no Jardim Ângela, bairro da periferia da cidade de São Paulo que chegou a ser considerado o bairro mais violento do mundo, e em Diadema, que deixou de ser em quatro anos a cidade mais violenta de São Paulo, passando a ocupar o 18º posto.
Se você não pretende se deixar levar pelo desencanto, pela frustração, pelo ceticismo e pela desesperança, leia este livro. Entenderá, com base em experiências reais, que é possível, sem ilusões voluntaristas, apelos messiânicos e excessos e abusos no exercício da autoridade do Estado, mostrar aos bandidos armados que essa é uma longa guerra de muitas batalhas, mas que, ao fim e ao cabo, eles não só não podem ganhá-la, como a estão perdendo – e a perderão.
2008 - 208 páginas - 16 x 23 cm - R$ 35,00 - ISBN: 978-85-7740-046-1
Lêdo IVO
Pinturas de Gonçalo IVO
Desenho de Gianguido BONFANTI
O poema narra a visão da infância guardada pela memória. Obra de perda e despedida, seus versos longos se desdobram como as ondas do mar alagoano. Música e imagem se fundem para exprimir uma reflexão sobre o sentido da existência, da qual as pinturas de Gonçalo Ivo não são comentário ou simples ilustração.
2008 - 64 páginas - 16,8 x 24,5 cm - R$ 38,00 - ISBN: 978-85-7740-040-9
Katia MACIEL (org.)
37 textos de teóricos e artistas que compõem, em suas inter-relações, amplo panorama sobre as novas situações de cinema, em que superfícies híbridas de luz e movimento se conjugam com a participação e a imersão dos espectadores. A introdução da organizadora define o título do livro.
2009 - 432 páginas - 16 x 23 cm - R$ 65,00 - ISBN: 978-85-7740-009-3
Contact : Araken GOMES RIBEIRO
International Alliance
of Independent Publishers
38 rue Saint-Sabin
75011 Paris - France