Announcing Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations by Kopano Maroga

uHlanga are thrilled to announce the release of Kopano Karoga’s first collection, Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations.

In a provocative yet unexpectedly tender debut, Kopano Maroga immerses themself in Christian myth and mystery, emerging reborn.

In a riotous, innovative and unapologetic display of self-exposure, self-examination and self-love, Maroga appropriates and creates a (sometimes literal) collage of religious imagery, sexual want, and embodiedness – eventually widening their gaze to encompass the realities faced by black, queer, femme and trans folk in South Africa and further afield.

Indeed, these are poems of pain, loss, introspection, and regret; but they are also works of great and usual beauty, depth, desire, and ambition – in sum, the evidence of a powerful new voice in South African poetry.

Kopano Maroga was born in Benoni in 1994. They are a performance artist, writer, cultural worker and co-founding director of the socio-cultural arts organization any body zine. Currently they are working as a curator and dramaturg at Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Ghent, Belgium. They very much believe in the power of love as a weapon of mass construction.

We’re also happy to announce that the proceeds from the first print run of this book will be donated to GALA Queer Archive in Johannesburg.

Please note that this title contains depictions of nudity and sex acts.

The book will be available and available to order from mid-November from bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and soon from the African Books Collective.

uHlanga and Koleka Putuma part ways

It is with sadness that uHlanga announces that it will no longer be publishing books by Koleka Putuma. This includes 2017’s bestseller, Collective Amnesia, and her unreleased second book, which we were planning to release in 2021.

This is a decision made by mutual consent and without animosity. uHlanga was informed this past week that Putuma has decided to pursue the sole ownership of all of her intellectual property under her new media company, Manyano Media (Pty) Ltd. As part of this process, uHlanga has sold and transferred all rights for the seven translations it has brokered for Collective Amnesia to Manyano Media, and has reverted rights for both books in English back to the author.

As of today Collective Amnesia is also no longer available in the uHlanga edition (ISBNs 978-0-620-73508-7 and 978-0-620-89364-0), which has sold over 5500 copies since 2017. Some books that are already stocked by stores may still be available for purchase, but in general the edition will no longer be sold through bookshops, nor distributed by Protea Distribution in Southern Africa or the African Books Collective in other territories, effective immediately. Manyano Media will be producing and distributing its own edition, and they will notify the industry of the details of the new edition.

uHlanga wishes Koleka all the best in her new endeavours. All queries relating to her books may now be directed to Manyano Media at manyanomedia@gmail.com.

Musawenkosi Khanyile shortlisted for 2020 South African Literary Awards

We’re very pleased to hear the news that Musawenkosi Khanyile’s debut collection All the Places has been shortlisted for the 2020 South African Literary Award for Poetry.

This continues a successful year for Musa, who was also a finalist for the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize, which was eventually won by uHlanga’s own Saaleha Idrees Bamjee.

Congratulations to Musa, and to the other shortlisted writers, Sally-Ann Murray, Marlise Joubert, and Loftus Marais. The full shortlist for all of the awards is available here.

The winners will be announced later this month.

Announcing An Illuminated Darkness, the debut collection from Jacques Coetzee, out now in print and audio, soon in braille

We're very proud to announce the release of An Illuminated Darkness, the debut collection from Jacques Coetzee, a stalwart of the Cape Town poetry scene.

Coetzee's poetry is extraordinary. Living with visual impairment since birth, and blindness for the majority of his life, his poetics is necessarily different to those of sighted writers. Of course, his experiences are different, too. His poems are filled with unwanted prayers, resented kindnesses, and other proofs that living with visual impairment is less about matters of sight than it is about problems of perception; most often, other people's.

But a life without mirrors is not a life without self-examination. On the contrary, Jacques’s debut is a manifesto of personhood, a portrait of a world brought into being by its textures, its movements, and – most importantly – its music. Easy-flowing and sensuous, this is a collection of the unexpected, the strange, and the suddenly beautiful.

Representation matters too, of course. Blind poets are rare in South African letters, and because of this, we're trying to make our books more accessible. We are collaborating with Blind SA to make Jacques' book into braille editions for print-disabled readers, are having it made available on their soon-to-be-launched e-library service, and have even created an audiobook of Jacques reading the poems, which is free now to download and listen to on Soundcloud and our website.

Jacques Coetzee, born in 1972, matriculated from the Pioneer School for the Blind in Worcester. He has worked as a busker at the Cape Town Waterfront, and has tutored English literature to first- and second-year university students. In 2002 he obtained a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, and in 2018, he and Barbara Fairhead published a joint anthology of poems, The Love Sheet. He currently lives in Cape Town, where he is a singer-songwriter in the band Red Earth & Rust.

An Illuminated Darkness is available through all good bookstores in SA and Namibia, as well as through the African Books Collective, from 1 September 2020.

Announcing Rumblin', the new chapbook from Sihle Ntuli

Photo by Niamh Walsh-Vorster

We're happy to announce the upcoming release of Rumblin', the new chapbook from Durban poet Sihle Ntuli.

Ntuli is a poet that does something that many poets try, and most fail at. His poetry is based on its own internal rhythm and music.

Perhaps even more so than other South African cities, Durban is a place that is defined by its music and soundscape, from the steady persistence of waves along its long-stretching coast, to the Dopplering noise of taxis as they trawl the sprawling metropolis with over-loud and distorting sound systems. (There's a reason why it's the home of qgom, after all.) It is a city that is as loud as it is humid, and is as inside you as you are inside it. Rumblin' captures this Durban in a style gradually becoming Ntuli's own – sparse free verse that relies on its own beat and sound to create and emphasise meaning.

It's a slim and surprising chapbook, full of verve, unexpected pockets of sadness and humour, and, in general, is just really good. This is the right thing for you if you're tired of the same old thing.

Ntuli is a classicist and academic, born in 1990. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Classical Civilisations and has lectured previously at the University of the Free State. During his tenure, he was awarded the 2019 CTL Innovation Award for Curriculum Design and Delivery. He is previously the author of Stranger (2015) and was shortlisted for the DALRO Poetry Prize in 2017.

The book is available from the beginning of September through bookstores in South Africa and Namibia, distributed by Protea Boekhuis, and is from next week available overseas through the African Books Collective. RRP is R100.