A review of Pravasan Pillay's Chatsworth, by Karabo Kgoleng

Set in the highly populated township of Chatsworth in KwaZulu-Natal, this collection of 11 short stories highlights working class life in a residential area that was allocated for South Africans of Indian descent during apartheid. The stories take place in the recent past and bring to life the nuances of life in this community, without leaning into stereotypes. The characters vary in age and ethnolinguistic background, from Tamil to Gujarat to hints of Telugu and Urdu. Read more.

Gail Dendy in conversation with Janet van Eeden about her poetry collection Closer Than That

Gail Dendy’s new collection, Closer Than That, is full of delicate observations about the human condition, as are many anthologies, but these poems are crafted with the utmost skill and imbued with the musical soul of a dancer.

The poetry lilts and dances in rhythmic metre and one can almost imagine Dendy’s feet keeping time to the words, as if they were notes on a musical score...Read more here 

Janet van Eeden of LitNet reviews The Edge of Things, and chats to Arja Salafranca and other contributors about their stories

The Edge of Things is an eclectic collection of short stories traversing a vast distance emotionally and intellectually.

For example, Arja Salafranca’s moving story about a woman forced to live in a restrictive apparatus in “Iron Lung” is a million miles away stylistically from Aryan Kaganof’s tale of decadence and debauchery on a night out in Durban in “Same Difference.”

As with all anthologies, some stories will resonate with each reader more than others...Read more here

Independent publishers: how do they survive? Janet van Eeden interviews Deep South's Robert Berold

Janet: Robert, can you tell us a bit about your publishing house? What did you set out to achieve when you started publishing and how long have you been going?

Robert I started Deep South with Paul Wessels in 1995. At the time I was editing New Coin. Seitlhamo Motsapi, whose brilliant poems had been appearing in New Coin, told me he couldn’t find any publisher to take on his work. I was so outraged that I went to Paul and said we have to go into publishing. Our next book, Ari Sitas’s Slave Trades, was published a whole five years later. So in a way we only started in 2000. From 2003 I ran Deep South on my own...Read more here

Independent publishers: how do they survive? Janet van Eeden interviews Modjaji Books' Colleen Higgs

Janet: Can you tell us a bit about your publishing house? What did you set out to achieve when you started publishing and how long have you been going?

Colleen: Four years. I wanted to make a platform available for southern African women’s writing, in particular for writers that were unlikely to find other opportunities to be published, or were writing about issues that would not attract the attention of commercial publishers or even of other indie publishers. I also knew that this might mean I would have to work developmentally with some writers, and find really good editors too...Read more here

Independent publishers: how do they survive? Janet van Eeden interviews Gary Cummiskey

For some years I’ve wondered how on earth publishers survive in this less than literary country. Perhaps the one or two bestsellers like Spud can make up for the years of publishing books which won’t necessarily do as well. Then I began to think about independent publishers. How on earth do they manage to make ends meet when they have no back-up or a large stable of books to carry them through the tough times? I decided to ask two of this country’s most indomitable publishers how they kept going. I’ve put these questions to Gary Cummiskey, the sole proprietor of Dye Hard Press, to kick off the debate. More indie publishers will comment soon...Read more here

Gary Cummiskey, author of Sky Dreaming, in conversation with Janet van Eeden

Sky Dreaming is Gary Cummiskey’s most accomplished work so far. In this volume his work takes a more introspective turn with the unifying theme of a profound existential questioning of life. This kind of depth comes, I believe, from suffering through difficult times. There’s a world-weariness to this collection which takes it into universal territory... Read more here

Big Book Chain Chat - In Love With Books - Gary Cummiskey

What made you fall in love with books – and how did it happen?

I have no recollection of exactly when I discovered the world of books and the magic of words. I was an avid reader of comics as a child and vividly remember when I moved on from reading the Beano and Casper the Friendly Ghost comics and on to the Illustrated Classics series...Read more here 

Bleeding on to the page: a review of pushing from the riverbank by alan finlay and an interview by Janet van Eeden with the author

pushing from the riverbank is Alan Finlay’s latest collection of poetry. It deals with, amongst other things, the sensitive underbelly of a life in transition, of a man in the fluid space between identities as partner, father and writer. As such, the poet resonates with universal emotions, dealing in his poetic exploration with the intransigence of his own role as it moves into territories which are not so much unformed as they are unexplored....Read more here