Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia Wins the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

We are proud to announce that Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia has won the 2018 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.

This year’s prize was judged by Bernardine Evaristo, renowned author of fiction and founder of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She said of Collective Amnesia: “Everything about this poetry debut feels fresh and timely. Putuma, writing from a queer female perspective, has a liberated poetic voice that engages with politics, race, religion, relationships, sexuality, feminism and more. There is also risky formal innovation, emotional and intellectual complexity, biblical intertextuality, and a stirring declamatory audibility.”

As the winner of the Luschei Prize, Putuma will receive an award of U.S. $1,000. The award is named after Glenna Luschei, the U.S. American poet and publisher.

This marks the second year in a row an uHlanga book has featured in the prizewinners for this award, after Stephen Symon’s commendation for the 2017 award for his collection Questions for the Sea.

We would like to express our thanks to the African Poetry Book Fund – to Kwame Dawes and Ashley Strosnider and their team – for this kind recognition of Koleka and her work. Congratulations too to the writers of the commended works this year, Nick Makoha’s Kingdom of Gravity (Peepal Tree) and Dami Ajayi’s A Woman’s Body is a Country (Ouida).

Announcing: All the Places by Musawenkosi Khanyile

We are thrilled to announce the upcoming publication of All the Places, the full debut collection by Musawenkosi Khanyile.

This is an especially important release for us. Musa was one of the poets we published in our first-ever release, a once-off magazine in 2014. It was one of his first publications, and his growth as a poet — which has included a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of the Western Cape — has culminated in this wonderful collection.

In his moving collection, Musawenkosi Khanyile speaks for the heartache, perseverance and untriumphant triumph of township life. Through snapshots and memories of family and community, centred around the boy- and young manhood of a single narrator,  All The Places is a rare and compelling poetic Bildungsroman, with the ambition and scope of a novel, paired with (and pared down to) minimalist and clear-eyed verse.

Concurrently original and quintessentially South African, these poems mark Khanyile out as a skilled stylist and storyteller – a frank and important new voice in South African literature.

Musawenkosi Khanyile was born in 1991 and raised in Nseleni, KwaZulu-Natal. He holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology from the University of Zululand, and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of the Western Cape. His first chapbook, The Internal Saboteur, appears in the African Poetry Book Fund's 2019 New-Generation African Poets Boxset. He currently lives in Cape Town.

For more information, see the publication’s page. An overseas edition will soon be available through the African Books Collective.

We are looking forward to launching the book at The Book Lounge in Cape Town on 18 July. Further launches in other towns and cities will be announced soon.

Koleka Putuma's Collective Amnesia is translated into Spanish, German, and Danish

We’re thrilled that our bestseller Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma has been or is being translated into three languages. It has been translated into Spanish by Arrate Hidalgo and Lawrence Schimel and published by Flores Raras (released December 2018); into German by the Herman Hesse Prize-winning poet Paul-Henri Campbell, published by Wunderhorn Verlag (to be released June 2019); and into Danish, published by Rebel With a Cause.

The Spanish version has already received rave reviews, such as Africa LGBT, who write that “Amnesia Colectiva is a brave and determined exploration of transcendental and controversial topics such as South African history, the reality of black women in South Africa, homosexuality or patriarchy[, and] is at the same time an assessment, reminder and revelation of everything that South African society has ignored and relegated to oblivion”

We wish Koleka, the translators, and publishers the very best of luck.

Announcing: The Mushroom Summer of Skipper Darling by Tony Voss

uHlanga is happy to announce the publication of The Mushroom Summer of Skipper Darling by Tony Voss. One of South(ern) Africa's most astute critics of poetry over the decades, Voss is finally publishing his debut collection at the age of 83. The book is brought out by our friends and collaborators at Crane River, and has been produced and distributed by uHlanga.

This is a collection that accomplishes that rare thing in poetry: of being an immediate pleasure even as it demands re-reading and slow contemplation. With classical form and meter meeting modern sensibility and local image, The Mushroom Summer of Skipper Darling fills a gaping absence in South African letters, and will kickstart an appreciation anew of a strong, steady and significant influence on this country’s literature.

Voss was born in Swakopmund in 1935. He was educated at St George’s Grammar School, Rhodes University, and the University of Washington, Seattle. His interests were formed by his Southern African upbringing, his parents’ faith, and imagination – from songs of the First World War and swing, to Yeats’s Oxford Book of Modern Verse. He taught English in universities until he retired from the service of the then University of Natal in 1995.

The book is available to order from most worthwhile bookshops in SA and Namibia.

Open submissions in February 2019

uHlanga are excited to announce our second open submissions period for original collections of poetry from South African poets, or poets living in South Africa. Our last open submissions period resulted in the publication of three books, and we look forward to reading new work!

Please take note the following important information.

Submissions will be open from 1 February to 28 February 2019. Manuscripts must be predominantly written in English, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, or a combination of those languages. Every manuscript will be read, and all will be considered for publication.

There is no indicated length for manuscripts, although most books published by uHlanga contain 20-40 poems. (Manuscripts envisioned as chapbooks, for example, may be shorter, while epic poetry may contain very few poems.) The more coherent, structured and economical your manuscript is, the higher the chance of it being published – so do not simply include every poem you have ever written. Successful manuscripts will be published in the manner and format that uHlanga deems most appropriate for the content.

Please note that anthologies or retrospective collections – i.e. collected or selected poems – will not be accepted. Manuscripts containing poems previously published in magazines, anthologies, journals, or online will be accepted, as long as each previously-published poem is acknowledged in the manuscript. Manuscripts that have already been published previously – including self-publishing – will not be accepted.

We accept manuscripts from writers of any experience, whether they have published a collection of poetry before or not. It is, however, highly recommended that you read our director’s open letter, penned after the last open submissions period in 2017. It contains insights that will be helpful for your submission.

GUIDELINES

  1. Writers must be either a citizen, national, or permanent resident of South Africa.

  2. Submissions will only be accepted through our email address –submissions@uhlangapress.co.za – as either .doc or .pdf attachments, with all text in Times New Roman. Include your name and contact information on a cover letter attached alongside the manuscript.

  3. You must prove ownership of at least one uHlanga book (either by photo/screenshot of a receipt, or a selfie with the book, or by other means) to submit your manuscript. This proof must be attached in your email submission. (Note: This condition will be waived if you cannot afford to – or otherwise cannot – buy one of our books. Please be in touch if this is the case.)

Successful writers will be offered our standard contract. Please note that this is not a competition: we reserve the right to publish none of the manuscripts received during this submissions period.

As noted above, being familiar with our books is essential: feel free to mention to us why you think your manuscript will be a good fit for uHlanga.

There is no reading fee. Agented submissions are discouraged, but not strictly disallowed.

Do not submit your manuscript before 1 February 2019 or after 28 February 2019 – it will be discarded without being read. Good luck!