Gary Cummiskey's Off-ramp still ongoing ...

A finalist for the 2014 Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award, Off-ramp is the debut short fiction collection of Gary Cummiskey and consists of ten stories often characterised by a surreal eroticism. Set mainly in contemporary South Africa, the book opens with a young man’s hallucinatory encounter with a derelict in a Johannesburg street; there is a couple’s visit to a sinister Free State farm; an editor who reluctantly agrees to meet an aspiring woman writer at midnight; two young men who go out on a drinking spree as the country teeters on the edge of civil war; a restless teenager who stalks an unknown woman; and a middle-aged academic who engages in an obsessive, sadistic relationship with a prostitute.

The stories in this startling collection offer a vision of individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity. Beyond the off-ramp lies a pervasive, heavy dread and an unnameable, perhaps unknowable fear. Cummiskey creates an off-kilter reality that is both disturbing and compelling.

Off-ramp is available at R200 per copy, by courier, for South Africa.

Overseas mail seems to have gone pear-shaped again, so regret no overseas orders at the moment unless you are prepared to pay for courier delivery.

Email me at dyehardpress@gmail.com for order details.

Pravasan Pillay's Chatsworth gets mention in review

Pravasan Pillay's Chatsworth gets a nice wee mention in Arja Salafranca's Media24 review of Terry-Ann Adams's debut short story collection White Chalk.

(Note: There is a paywall for the review.)

Spirit presence

 

Aztec elephant

 

Gary Cummiskey interviewed by Shafinaaz Hassim on BookBytes, Salaamedia

TV appearnce on BookBytes, Salaamedia

 

Gary Cummiskey being interviewed by Shafinaaz Hassim, on BookBytes, Salamedia, on Sunday 24 July, 2022. A wonderful, warm conversation about poetry, short fiction and publishing in South Africa. We chatted a bit about Outside the cave in particular and I read one poem from the collection. Chatsworth and The Edge of Things were also discussed, as single collections and anthologies published by Dye Hard Press.

On Bookbytes, with Shafinaaz Hassim

 

Some have called it shocking, obscene and offensive ....

It’s Yeoville in the mid-1990s. Enter Fig, a copywriter with a penchant for living on the edge – staying up all night, having casual sex and snorting cocaine. Drifting from seedy clubs to grotty flats, Fig continues his aimless odyssey … until the day he falls asleep in a client presentation and is fired.

Nine months later Fig is hooked on heroin and turns to drug-dealing for survival. If his previous lifestyle skirted close to the danger zone, it’s now gloves off as he drops all pretence of respectability and descends into a world of syndicates and violence.

From now on, he’s living with the safety off.

A novel not for the faint-hearted ...

Graeme Feltham was born in 1965 and grew up in Uitenhage. He completed a degree in journalism at Rhodes University and moved to Johannesburg in the late 1980s. In addition to being a writer, he was an experimental composer and performance artist. His novella One Hundred Naked Beers was published by Brevitas in 2002. His work also appeared in literary journals such as New Coin and donga. Feltham died in December 2017.

With introductions by Luke Feltham and James de Villiers.

220 pp.

ISBN 978-0-9869982-6-3

I can have the book couriered to your door in South Africa within 24 hours (excepting weekends) for a total of R260.00.

Email dyehardpress@gmail.com to order!

Never a dull moment

 

It's only love

 

Eye see you two

 

Yet another drawing on the cover of Graffiti poetry magazine

 A third drawing to appear on the cover of Graffiti poetry magazine in Kolkata, edited by Subhankar Das.

A new chapbook coming soon from Dye Hard Press

 A new chapbook coming soon from Dye Hard Press: Aiyo!, three tales of terror by Pravasan Pillay – you’ll never look at a bunny chow the same way again! Watch this space.

Dust of this world

 

Shafinaaz Hassim receives Outside the cave

 

Author Shafinaaz Hassim receives her copies of Outside the cave and Off-ramp, both by Gary Cummiskey and published by Dye Hard Press.

I have something of yours