The Edge of Things and Arja Salafranca's The Thin Line on display at the Cape Town Book Fair 2012

The Edge of Things: South African Short Fiction, selected by Arja Salafranca, was published by Dye Hard Press in 2011. Salafranca's debut collection of short fiction, The Thin Line, was published by Modjaji Books in 2010. Salafranca was interviewed about her writing at the Anfasa stand at the Cape Town Book Fair 2012.

Cape Town Book Fair 2009: Finding its feet in Cape Town

With the word "recession" on almost everyone's lips, there had been some initial scepticism about the success of this year's Cape Town Book Fair in June, and 60 fewer stands in the exhibition hall added to that scepticism. However, from the first hour of the fair, the public began pouring in and by the end of the four days it was reported that a record 57,000 visitors had attended – an increase of 6,000 on last year....Read more here

Cape Town Book Fair 2009: Authors discuss literary prizes

Literary prizes are often seen as an endorsement of a book’s value, and may be regarded as something hankered after by authors.

In a discussion at the Via Afrika forum on the first day of the Cape Town Book Fair, four authors — all of whom have works under consideration for literary awards — debated the question, “Literary prizes — praise or prattle?”

Julia Martin, author of A Millimetre of Dust, set the keynote, saying there is a part of her that likes the idea of receiving a literary prize — they are like presents given to a child for doing well. Everybody, after all, likes praise. The receipt of a prize also helps to sell books and so publishers as well as authors like them.

But another part of her questions the awarding of prizes and asks how much of it has to do with business and branding rather than creativity. The creative spirit, she says, does not concern itself with receiving prizes.

And then there are questions about whose interests are served by literary prizes, how judges are selected, and who pays for the prize money. Still, Martin concedes the possibility of winning a prize does act as an incentive, especially for new writers, but overall she does not feel prizes should be taken seriously.

Zukiswa Wanner, author of Behind Every Successful Man, favours literary awards but criticises the amounts paid to writers, which she says are a clear indication that writers are not appreciated in SA.

The Rowing Lesson author Anne Landsman takes a similar view to Martin, that generally writers write because they have to write, it is part of their blood, a vocation, and literary prizes are a byproduct of the creative process.

She also questions the segmentation of literary prizes — such as prizes for women’s writing — but agrees that it is not a bad thing to endorse a literary work as much as possible.

Finuala Dowling, author of Notes from a Dementia Ward, feels literary prizes involve a clash of worlds — the one materialistic, the other a world of solitude and creativity. She feels awarding prizes is like trying to put a price tag on creativity, and as literary prizes in SA involve relatively small amounts of money, this makes her even more cynical about their value.

However, she agrees that prizes can motivate new writers, and help them to become better known as prizes do boost sales.

Across the table there were concerns about prizes being, as Martin says, short-cuts to branding, and about how judges decide which work wins. There were also questions about the absence of literary awards for crime writing and light writing in SA, despite the popularity of both genres.

The size of the prizes in SA was clearly a concern, but as presenter Ben Williams, editor of Book SA, pointed out, some longstanding, prestigious literary awards such as the Olive Schreiner Award might offer only a couple of thousand of rands, depending on what the English Academy of Southern Africa can afford in a given year, while relatively new awards, such as The Sunday Times Literary Awards, offer far more.

The M-Net Literary Awards recently paid out a total of R350 000 — but, as Williams pointed out, the Impact Dublin Award pays €100 000.

In conclusion, Martin and Landsman again warned that literary prizes should not be taken too seriously, and Dowling warned against the dangers of writers and writing becoming commodified.

Wanner, however, still came out strongly in favour of prizes — but with more money.

(Published in The Weekender, June 20, 2009)

Cape Town Book Fair 2009: Poets compete with soccer fans

Cape Town small publisher Modjaji Books launched four collections at the Cape Town Book Fair.

Burnt Offering is Joan Metelerkamp’s seventh poetry collection, and she read the poem Penelope at the launch, weaving rich images and motifs from classical Greek mythology into a contemporary, domestic setting.

It reflects her concerns and preoccupation with the depth and complexity of life, rather than being interested in writing “book club ladies’ books”. Metelerkamp’s confident, steady reading was thankfully not too disrupted by cheers from a 2010 Soccer World Cup stand just a few aisles away.

This was followed by a reading from Helen Moffett’s debut collection, Strange Fruit. Moffett started off by reading some short and relatively light poems from her collection, saying she hoped nobody scored a goal while she was reading — but then someone did.

Nevertheless, Moffett continued, reading the lighthearted We will fight them at La Playa, which opens with the lines: “You and I are at the Waterfront/on a secret mission:/it may look as if we are drinking coffee/and eating Florentines;/but in truth we have bazookas,/and are shooting every twosome/we see holding hands”.

But not all Moffett’s poems are lighthearted fantasy: several trace her painful journey to acceptance of the fact that she cannot have a child, and poems such as Baby shower, The ultrasound, My daughter, and Envy are the evidence. Moffett read from The ovary in the arm, which contains the lines: “All I wanted was natural, normal/the everyday stuff;/conceiving in passion/…an ordinary breeding and birthing./ So little to ask for;/beyond impossible to get.”

Please, Take Photographs is the first poetry collection of award-winning author Sindiwe Magona.

Magona’s gift as a storyteller shone through as she read the delightfully warm narrative poem For Maria, tracing the life of a woman from her first to ninth decade, as she marries and has children and then watches her children in turn become adults.

It is a life in which she sees “all those brilliant/Moments of loving,/Of giving to others”.

The poem ends hilariously, with the 90-year-old narrator demanding: “Pass me that damn bottle of wine, will you?” — which drew much laughter and applause from the audience.

The fourth book launched was Oleander, which is the fourth collection of Fiona Zerbst who, while present, declined to read, and so poet Malika Ndlovu read a selection from the volume.

The poems ranged from the tense Remembering S-21, Cambodia, which opens with the lines “This was a school/before it was wire and silence”, opening out to the wider world of Possibilities , where “The possible is/a room like the cell/of a monk. No dust./A bed. A chair./Anything happens”.

There was also the powerful, closing poem of the collection, Beside the Nile, which contains the haunting lines: “I hold out my hand/and here you are,/Nile that watches the watcher/look at the water;/Nile that knows/a hundred crimes, excuses”.

Ndlovu’s poetic book, Invisible Earthquake — A Mothers’ Journey Through Stillbirth, was published by Modjaji earlier this year and on Monday at the book fair she gave a moving reading.

Ndlovu explains that for some time after she lost her child she was haunted by a sense of a void, and so created the book to fill that void. Her performance was attended by about 120 people, some of whom were visibly moved by the experience of loss and pain that she recounts in her brief but powerful work.

(Published in The Weekender, June 20, 2009)

Cape Town Book Fair 2009: Jacana uses guerilla tactics

Rumours were circulating last month that Joburg-based publisher Jacana would not be exhibiting at the Cape Town Book Fair this year.

Jacana director Bridget Impey cryptically let on that while Jacana would be participating this year, the nature of its participation would be different.

Come June 13 and all was made clear. Jacana was present at the book fair, but did not have a stand in the exhibition hall.

Instead, the publisher was present either through organised book events and readings, or by unscheduled, guerrilla-style flash appearances at retailers’ stands.

Visitors could be notified of these flash appearances by registering with an SMS service, though this unfortunately fell flat on the first two days due to network problems.

Not that this was a train smash, since Jacana — which organised its office in the foyer of the convention centre — had staff circulating flyers to visitors shortly before the events.

Publishing director Maggie Davey says Jacana felt a need to adopt innovative marketing, though she agrees it could be seen as a cost-cutting measure. “Jacana felt a need to use more innovative, less conventional methods to put our authors forward and reach audiences,” she says.

Director Mike Martin says: “We asked ourselves why we were participating at the book fair, and what we wanted to get out of it. When you start by asking yourself that question, you start thinking out of the box, and wondering if renting a stand is necessary.”

There were also a number of practical business considerations. Impey points out that at previous book fairs, when Jacana had a stand, it would be selling books in competition with retailers who were their biggest clients.

So this year, rather than selling books, Jacana partnered with retailers on scheduled and unscheduled events.

“And it hasn’t been easy,” says Davey. “It is a lot of hard work. You have to work a lot harder than if you are just at a stand.”

Last year, there was concern among some exhibitors that the trade aspect of the fair was being drowned out by the retail and literary event components, and some would prefer that a day be devoted to trade, with the fair closed to the public.

Davey still holds that an exhibitor’s stand has its value, but says trying to create business within the exhibition hall is difficult, particularly because of the noise and the amount of human traffic.

Martin believes that a problem with the Cape Town Book Fair is that it is becoming repetitive. “It is the same thing every year, the same exhibitors, the same stands. There is nothing new, nothing to really knock your socks off.”

Added to this is the cost of participating in the fair, and looking at what benefits are being received. One solution for players from outside the Cape is the possibility of creating a Johannesburg book event.

Martin says: “In Johannesburg, publishers could reach bigger audiences; in Cape Town it is always the same audiences. With a Johannesburg book fair, publishers could grow their market.

“It is also a matter of rethinking the concept of the book fair and of placing it on a more human scale rather than in a huge convention centre. We should stop trying to be London or Frankfurt, and create something unique.

“People are already talking about what Jacana has done by not having an exhibitor’s stand, and if we have got some debate going, that is a start, as other people will also start thinking out of the box.”

By Monday afternoon it seemed that Jacana’s guerrilla approach had annoyed a fellow publisher, who lodged a complaint with the fair’s organisers, accusing Jacana of “pamphleteering”, and that the publisher was ordered by security to leave the convention centre. However, it turned out there had been some misunderstanding, and Jacana was assured it could remain at the fair.

(Published in The Weekender, June 20, 2009)

Cape Town Book Fair 2009:The world of ideas is alive and well

There might have been some initial concern about the recession’s effect on the success of this year’s Cape Town Book Fair, and with 60 fewer stands in the exhibition hall than last year, those concerns may have seemed well founded.

However, from the first hour of the four-day fair, the public began pouring in and the organisers might well find that the previous record of 51000 visitors has been matched. The drop in the number of stands seemed to work better, as the hall was less crowded and the event seemed more manageable, with room to breathe.

There were also some initial concerns about the programme this year, with several people feeling that it was flat and uninspiring, placing an emphasis on issue-related discussions rather than opportunities to meet a wide range of authors. But this did not deter the crowds. There were a few repeat events, such as eight book-signings by Spud creator John van de Ruit , but, judging by the long queues of people wanting their copies signed, this was absolutely necessary.

One of the highlights on the first day was a discussion on cartooning as social and political commentary in SA, with Jonathan Shapiro, Andy Mason and Antjie Krog. Krog started out by highlighting the admiration she has for Shapiro, whose work involves putting himself at risk daily, particularly in such a divided society as SA.

There has been criticism that Shapiro is not “a real cartoonist” since he is “fighting for something”, and Krog asked him whether he felt he was still fighting, or whether he was now “an official cartoonist”. Shapiro’s response was that he felt he was still fighting but with a subtle difference and that he had become more of a commentator, a social analyst or “shit stirrer”.

He did, however, feel that he was no longer an activist, and that the political landscape of SA had changed, particularly as his critics have forgotten how critical he was of the previous regime.

Shapiro said a big challenge was how to be critical of the government and at the same time avoid becoming a tool of neoliberals, or worse, the right wing.

He has been particularly concerned to find some of his cartoons on right-wing websites, posted without his knowledge and taken out of context. The most difficult issue, however, has been dealing with the controversy of the “rape of Justice” cartoon, but Shapiro said that while he could defend a cartoon he had created, he could not take responsibility for readers’ interpretations.

An interesting panel discussion at the Via Africa forum on Sunday was with the editors of the book Load Shedding — Liz McGregor and Sarah Nuttall, with contributor John Hyslop — and Kevin Bloom, author of Ways of Staying.

Both books look at contemporary SA, with themes of personal loss and how to continue living in such a violent society. There are concerns about how to come to terms with painful events, especially where loved ones have been lost as a result of violent crime, and how to deal with the hatred that leads to violence, including self-hatred, which sometimes leads to xenophobic violence.

The topic of crime and violence continued in a slightly different vein at a discussion among local crime writers Mike Nicol, Deon Meyer, Joanne Hitchens, Margie Orford and new crime writer Roger Smith.

One focus was the rise of local crime writing as not only a popular genre, but one that is now being taken seriously and being respected. Orford suggested that one of the reasons crime writing is proving so popular in SA is that it is escapist literature. It is different from crime depicted in novels such as JM Coetzee’s because in crime fiction there is a resolution and criminals are brought to book.

Sunday was just as busy, if not busier, than the first day, and by 6.30pm the exhibition hall was far from deserted. There were, however, some complaints about noise levels , particularly with fans cheering on their teams at a 2010 Soccer World Cup stand.

While Monday seemed slightly quieter than the weekend, the aisles remained packed, and there were also a number of schoolchildren in attendance.

In collaboration with the Goethe Institute, the fair this year also ran an Africa Invitation Programme, bringing to Cape Town publishers from other African countries such as Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Libya. However, their stands seemed to be mainly unattended.

On Tuesday, the public holiday and the final day of the fair, there seemed to be a drop in the number of visitors, but only slightly.

One highlight of the morning was a well-attended talk at the Dalro Literary Forum by Mahmood Mamdani, whose new book — Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror — has just been published in SA by HSRC Press.

Mamdani examines why, when conflicts in Africa are so often reported about sparingly and shabbily, the conflict in Darfur has received such detailed attention in the media.

Debates continue over how many deaths have occurred in Darfur as a result of direct violence, and how many from disease and drought, but still there is often a refusal to look at the real causes for the conflict, to study the historical context and find peaceful and constructive resolutions.

Instead there is an attempt to demonise the perpetrators, and to advocate “good violence against bad violence”.

It was also extremely encouraging to note that while previous Cape Town Book Fairs have tended to be mainly middle-class white affairs, this year there was a noticeable change in the demographics of visitors.

(Published in The Weekender, June 20, 2009)