Helen Moffett's Prunings wins a SALA!

We are thrilled to announce that Helen Moffett's collection Prunings, published by uHlanga in 2016, has been named one of two co-winners in the Poetry category of the South African Literary Awards.

uHlanga would like to thank the Department of Arts and Culture and the wRite Associates for the honour.

We would also like to congratulate the other co-winner of the award, Simphiwe Ali Nolutshungu, who was recognised for her collection Iingcango Zentliziyo. (We are especially pleased that a collection in an African language has been honoured this year.)

Other winners can be viewed here.

Prunings is available and available for order in all good bookstores in South Africa, and through the African Books Collective in the Europe and the U.S. Readers in other countries are welcome be in touch with us to order copies directly.

An internship opportunity at uHlanga (Cape Town-based)

THIS POST HAS BEEN FILLED

Can you write well, take initiative, pour wine, chat comfortably with authors, proofread like a hawk, email strangers, and use social media, mailing lists, Excel, and Word? Would you like to develop those skills further while learning and working at uHlanga Press?

Applications are now open for an intern position at South Africa’s premier independent poetry publisher. This is an opportunity to work closely with some of the best South African poets and their publisher, to learn the ins-and-outs of the publishing industry, and most importantly to develop or improve skills such as writing, marketing, advertising, publicity, photography, social media management, communication, proofreading, content curation and networking. 

Who we’re looking for:

  • The only hard and fast rule is that we need someone who can write well and learn fast. 
  • This is not a full-time internship and would be suitable for someone who can manage their time while doing their own stuff.
  • No prior experience in the industry needed.
  • While it is not strictly necessary, it would benefit your application if you are working towards, or have recently completed, a degree or diploma in English or Journalism.
  • The internship is about a year long, but that’s not binding (see: current intern writing this advert to replace herself because she’s moving overseas after eight months).
  • We work mostly remotely but you should ideally be located in Cape Town for launches, meetings and events.

Oh, and while it doesn’t pay much, there is a little cash in it for you. We don’t believe in letting writers work for free.

To apply, please send an email to chelsea@uhlangapress.co.za, with the following:

  • A letter telling us why you want to work at uHlanga Press
  • Your most current CV
  • A link to, or sample of, your writing

Deadline for applications: 11 September 2017

Collective Amnesia collects universal acclaim

uHlanga debut catapults Koleka Putuma's rising star into outer space

by Chelsea Haith

uHlanga poet and author of Collective Amnesia, Koleka Putuma, was featured in this month's Elle South Africa magazine as part of a series of mini-profiles on womxn using spoken word poetry for change. In the piece, Putuma discusses the success of her debut collection and adds that Collective Amnesia has also been prescribed for study at tertiary level in South African universities. "It's a relief and a blessing to be studied and inserted into the curriculum while still alive," she said. 

Collective Amnesia is now prescribed as part of Uhuru Phalafala's English course at Stellenbosch University. It was featured in a guest lecture series by noted writer and academic Gabeba Baderoon at the University of Cape Town in May and Putuma's work is also being taught in the Drama department at Rhodes University. Sinking it's claws deeper in the academy, Collective Amnesia has also just featured as the subject of an academic paper presented at the "(Re)thinking African Feminisms Colloquium" in Grahamstown last month and will feature in academic papers at both the South African Society for General Literary Studies (SAVAL) conference (17-19 August) and at the English Academy of South Africa conference (6-8 September).

The reviews pouring in for the collection since it's launch in April this year have been thoughtful, congratulatory and urgent. They suggest that this is a book that has been necessary for a long, long time. in the review for Afripop! Luso Mnthali calls the book a collection of "survival poetry", while Sabelo Mkhabela for OkayAfrica writes: "It’s surreal to hold an anthology of someone who speaks the way I do—with slang, making reference to the internet, hip-hop, Oppikoppi, Nike, God’s medical bill, and has no economy for expletives. The South African publishing industry has its own types of books that it favors, and Collective Amnesia just wouldn’t normally make the cut. Which is why Putuma’s book is a special moment."

It is a special moment, especially as we at uHlanga have extended the print run four times, selling in excess of 2000 copies. Collective Amnesia was also in the Number 1 spot on The Book Lounge's best-seller's list two weeks ago, beating out Arundhati Roy's Man Booker longlisted The Ministry of Utmost Happiness for the top spot. 

This special moment has been celebrated by Maneo Mohale for the Mail & Guardian as a "stunning, complex exploration of the connections between personal and political memory" and this is equally captured in the collaborative effort of the accompanying Collective Amnesia visual series shot by Jarryd Kleinhans. In her immersive profile of Putuma for Between 10 and 5 Chaze Matakala asserts that: "We’ve got to appreciate that Koleka is as much of a visual magician as she is a written one, who aims to reach as many souls as possible."

The visual series can be found online in the three parts that match the three sections of the book: Inherited Memory, Buried Memory and Post-Memory. Memory is a key thematic concern in the book, and Putuma has ensured that she and the collection will also be remembered as one of the most insightful, honest and groundbreaking poetry publications in the post-post-1994 era.

Links to the reviews of Collective Amnesia thus far are below: 

Announcing: Liminal, by Douglas Reid Skinner

Cover design based on a drawing by Cleone Cull

uHlanga is proud to announce the upcoming publication of Liminal, the seventh collection of poems by Douglas Reid Skinner.


Why do we keep anything?
All morning I hear the pages
rustling softly in the stacks.
Autumn comes to all leaves.

This seventh collection from one of South African poetry’s under-appreciated masters is possibly his best yet. Metatextual, meticulous and deeply steeped in sentiment, Liminal is an exquisite and at-times startling rumination on lives lived, loves loved and writings written. 

Skinner’s technical mastery of his style and craft, honed over the decades, only brightens the emotions that run through a mélange of travel poems, remembrances, experiments and treatises on the nature of being, literature and friendship. A testament not only to his exacting eye and appreciation of that which has (and those who have) come before him, but also to an unending adaptability and an unerring desire for growth.

Photograph by Cleone Cull

Douglas Reid Skinner was born in Upington. He is the author of six previous collections of poetry – Reassembling World, The House in Pella District, The Unspoken, The Middle Years, Blue Rivers and Heaven: New & Selected Poems – as well as four books of translation, most recently The Secret Ambition: Selected Poems of Valerio Magrelli, translated from the Italian with Marco Fazzini. He directed The Carrefour Press from 1988 to 1992 and was editor of New Contrast from 1990 to 1992. He is co-editor of Stanzas.

Liminal is set for release in August 2017. Launch dates are as follows:

14 August: Book Lounge, Cape Town
16 August: David Krut Cape Town, Montebello Design Centre, Newlands
23 August: Kalk Bay Books, Kalk Bay
30 August: NELM, Grahamstown

More information about the book may be found here.

Please join our mailing list or Like uHlanga on Facebook to stay up-to-date!

We're temporarily suspending mail orders

In February this year, we started offering books via mail order through the Post Office. While this has been extremely popular so far, we regrettably have to suspend this for now. The reasons for this are below.

In the build-up to the release of Koleka Putuma's breakout (and fast-selling) debut Collective Amnesia, I thought I would try offer books via a pre-order mail order campaign. This was so we could be able to offer this important book to places that don't necessarily have bookstores, and to get around South Africa's lacklustre bookselling and distribution networks (no fault, of course, of our awesome distributors at XNA).

In order to keep the book affordable, at R100 per copy, we decided to use the vast infrastructure already put in place by the South African Post Office. Normal postage, without tracking numbers or anything special, is, throughout the vast majority of the country, reliable and surprisingly fast. It seemed a no-brainer, and fell in line with uHlanga's broader philosophy of making books more accessible to South Africans, and to expand this country's reading population.

While this campaign has worked tremendously, with over 200 mail orders of Koleka's book – many of which going to towns and city areas without good bookstores – the vast majority of books going to Gauteng (which in turn constitutes the bulk of our orders) are being seriously delayed or even lost by the South African Post Office.

While a book posted to the rural Eastern Cape might take only five days to arrive, our orders posted to Gauteng addresses are taking upwards of two months. I am currently receiving at least two mails per day from Gauteng customers asking where their books are. It's frustrating for me to have to write to all of them and say, honestly, I don't know – it has everything to do with the Post Office in Gauteng, and they'll just have to wait. But this is an unacceptable answer for many, and it doesn't particularly increase trust in my work.

The plan is clearly not working for one of the main provinces of the country, and as such, it is unacceptable for me to continue giving a unequal service (and in some cases, a disservice) to readers. So I've made the decision to stop offering mail order for our books countrywide until I find a solution to the issue that won't greatly drive up the cost of our books.

If you have ordered already, don't worry – I'll honour your order, and make sure your books get to you. If you are in Gauteng and your book has not arrived, don't worry – I will find ways to get your book or books to you. I apologise for the disappointment, even though, frustratingly, it's completely out of my hands.

For now, regrettably, our books are only available in bookstores and at our events. If your local bookstore does not stock our books, then i) ask them what's wrong with them and why they don't stock poetry and ii) make the order. The more bookstores are asked where our books are, the more they have to listen.

I will make an update to this post once our new online store and mail order service is up and running.

Best,
Nick Mulgrew