2011|12

Making rain for Southern African women writers

 MODJAJI BOOKS
PO Box 385
Athlone, 7760
Cape Town, South Africa

modjaji.books@gmail.com
cell +27 (0) 72 774 3546
tel +27 (0) 21 696 5503
fax +27 (0) 86 517 9066

blog http://modjaji.bookslive.co.za

South African Distributor

BLUE WEAVER
Specialist Publishers Representatives
PO Box 30370, Tokai, South Africa, 7966
Tel: +27 (021) 701 4477
Fax Local: 0865242139
Fax International: 0927865242139
Email: marketing@blueweaver.co.za
www.oneworldbooks.com
www.yourbooks.co.za

African Books Collective distributes

Modjaji Books internationally
PO Box 721
Oxford, OX1 9EN, United Kingdom
Tel & Fax: +44 (0) 1869 349110
eBooks available from www.littlewhitebakkie.com www.africanbookscollective.com
An independent publishing company based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Started by Colleen Higgs in 2007, we publish books by southern African
women writers. We publish novels, short stories, memoir, biography, poetry,
essays, narrative non-fiction and relevant non-fiction by new, established,
and award-winning women writers with brave voices.

The history of publishing in South Africa is enmeshed with the culture of

resistance that flourished under apartheid. "Struggle" literature may have
emerged from the "underground", but women's voices – particularly black
women's voices – are still marginalised. Modjaji Books addresses this
inequality by publishing books that are true to the spirit of Modjaji the rain
queen: a powerful female force for good, growth, new life, regeneration.

www.modjajibooks.co.za
follow us on
 catalogue
m odjaji b o o ks
Bom Boy 5
Snake 6
Whiplash 6
Got No Secrets 7
Go Tell the Sun 8
The Bed Book of Short Stories 9
This Place I Call Home 10
The Thin Line 11
Swimming with Cobras 12
Eloquent Body 12
Book of African Names 13
Small Publishers' Catalogue 2010 13
Hemispheres 14
Reclaiming the L-Word 15
Undisciplined Heart 16
Hester se Brood 17
Invisible Earthquake 18
Beyond the Delivery Room 19
Woman Unfolding 19
2011|12
At Least the Duck Survived 20
Difficult Gifts 20
Conduit 21
The Suitable Girl 21
These are the Lies I told you 22
Piece Work 22
Missing 23
The Everyday Wife 23
removing 24
Please, Take Photographs 24
Strange Fruit 25
Oleander 25
Burnt Offering 26
Life in Translation 26
Fourth Child 27
hands-on books
Lava Lamp Poems 29
Difficult to Explain 30
A Lioness at my Heels 31
Looking for Trouble 31
 forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming fiction

Omotoso was born in Bar-

bados and raised in Nigeria.
She has a Nigerian father,
West Indian mother and two
brothers. She is an architect;
space and buildings being
a passion of hers second to
Bom Boy
literature. She lives in Cape
Town working as a designer,
writer and novelist.

Yewande Omotoso
Leke is a troubled young man living in the suburbs of Cape Town. He develops
strange habits of stalking people, stealing small objects and going from doctor to
doctor in search of companionship rather than cure. Through a series of letters
written to him by his Nigerian father whom he has never met, Leke learns about
a family curse; a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Bom
Boy is a well-crafted, and complex narrative written with a sensitive understanding
of both the smallness and magnitude of a single life.
“Bom Boy surprises and delights, sings at turns, as it straddles the past and the
present, bringing into focus cultural beliefs while examining the intimacies and
complexities of bonds of family and friendship. What strikes me most is the
originality. This fine debut, firmly rooted in contemporary consciousness, is
story-telling of note which whets the appetite for more.” Joanne Hichens, author of
Divine Justice
“This is a novel bursting with elegance, written by a young author brimming with
genuine promise. Yewande Omotoso is a stylist with a literary vision.” Nuruddin
2011 Farah, author of Links, Knots & Crossbones
NOVEL
264 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-35-7
 fiction

Tracey Farren lives in Cape

Town with four dogs, a surfer
Snake and her three children. She
has a psychology honours
degree and worked as a
freelance journalist before
turning to fiction. Her debut
novel, Whiplash, was short-
listed for the Sunday Times
Tracey Farren Literary Awards 2009.

When the luminous stranger arrives on the farm, twelve year old Stella is convinced that Jerry
has come to heal her family. Now she tells the ‘terrible trouble’ to a tabloid journalist in an
effort to save the little that is left. The stage contains a metal wash tub, a traumatised child
2011 and a hard-hearted journalist. The script veers between love and violence, shining a naked
NOVEL bulb on psychosis and the preposterous ways in which people express their shame. Snake is
272 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-38-8 a tabloid tale told in a young girl’s voice; sincere, anxious and human.

Whiplash

Shortlisted for
An unputdownable, gripping debut novel, a ‘Cinderella’ story about a Muizenberg (Cape
Town) prostitute, Tess, who while being addicted to painkillers and selling her body on the
street finds redemption in unexpected places. Her quirky humour, honesty and love
of beauty save her when she faces tough choices. The book has heart and a Recipient of
feel-good factor in spite of its gritty and sometimes traumatic subject matter. White Ribbon
Award in December
2008
NOVEL 2008 from Women
Selected as Book of the Month by Adele Hamilton for the www.women24.com Demand Dignity
ISBN 978-0-9802729-2-5
320 pp Book Club, “Whiplash had me from page 1”. Advocacy Group.
 forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming fiction

Danila Botha was born in

Co-published with Tightrope Books (CAN)
Johannesburg, and moved
to Canada in her teens. She
studied Creative Writing at
York University and at Hum-
ber School for Writers, both
in Toronto. She volunteered
Got No Secrets
at two organizations benefit-
ting the homeless, which
inspired many of the stories.

Danila Botha
A startling and original new voice that owes as much to Black Flag and Bikini
Kill as it does to J.D. Salinger and Heather O’Neill. A South African copywriter is
transplanted to the urban jungle of Manhattan. A recovering rape victim tries to
resume a normal life. A Toronto nurse cuts herself to fill her emptiness. In Got No
Secrets, Danila Botha takes us into the private lives of twelve different women,
with only one question in mind: What if these women were you? From addiction
to abuse, from childhood to suicide, from Hillbrow, Johannesburg, to downtown
Toronto, Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always
fearless.
“These stories grab you by the throat and don't let you go, bearing witness to lives
in which self-destruction and hope are like symbions, each feeding the other.”
Nino Ricci
“Dark, relentless, and unflinching. Danila Botha's is a bold new voice.” Julia Tausch

2011
COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES
144 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-41-8
 fiction

Wame Molefhe started

writing short stories in 2005.
She freelances for a number
of publications and also
writes for TV. Just Once, her
children’s collection of short
stories was published in
Go Tell the Sun
2009. Go Tell the Sun is her
second short story collection.

Wame Molefhe
Wame Molefhe’s stories have a gentle, unassuming yet intimate and captivating
feel to them. Set in Botswana, the stories trace the lives of characters whose
paths cross and re-cross each others’, some times in and through love, at other
times through tragedy. And through them the author brings to bear a woman’s
perspective on the societal mores in which sexual abuse, homophobia and AIDS,
among others, flourish and spread. The social content and views are never
proclaimed as a loud agenda; instead, it forms a ‘natural’ backdrop to the lives
of the characters, something that may raise a wry comment or thought in one
character, while eliciting a mere shrug from another. Molefhe’s voice is, to some
extent, a world-weary voice, weary of all she has seen of society’s failures, but
never without the gentleness often absent and much needed in broken societies,
and never without the hope and redemption that can be found in love and the
imagination. Rustum Kozain
“Molefhe shines her thoughtful light on these and other issues by using a central
protagonist who lives through different scenarios. In this way she explores all
2011 possible facets of one character’s life and makes her go on a different journey in
COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES
128 pp
each story. All the stories are compelling in their own way and the collection is
ISBN 978-1-920397-03-6 paradoxically, a gently disturbing read.” Janet van Eeden, Litnet
 forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming fiction

Joanne Hichens

Lauri Kubuitsile
Kubuitsile's Sponsored by the
story 'In the Spirit of
McPhineas Lata' which

The Bed Book of Short Stories appears in The Bed Book

was shortlisted for the
2011 Caine Prize.

Compiled by Lauri Kubuitsile; edited by Joanne Hichens

A collection of short stories by new and established Southern African women
writers on the theme of Bed.
Joanne Fedler
Karabo Moleke Sylvia Schlettwein
Megan Ross Helen Walne
Ellen Banda-Aaku Marina Chichava Rita Britz
Joanne Hichens Rose Richards
Sarah Margot Saffer
Ginny Swart Romaine Hil
Nia Magoulianiti-McGregor Lotz
Pamela
Newham Isabella Morris
Melissa Gardiner Arja Salafranca Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

Erika Coetzee Bronwyn Jayne Bauling

Luso Katali Mnthali Claudie Muchindi
McLennan
Anne Woodborne Lauri Rosemund Handler Liesl
Kubuitsile Jobson
Gothataone Moeng Tinashe Chidyausiku

Lauri Kubuitsile is a full time writer who lives in Botswana. She has published
children’s and youth books, as well as many short stories. She has won prizes
for her adult short fiction and her youth books.
2010
COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES
ISBN 978-1-920397-31-9 Joanne Hichens is a crime fiction writer, editor and journalist. Her books have
312 pp been published locally and abroad. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT.
 fiction

Meg Vandermerwe was

born in South Africa in 1978.
She read English at Oxford
University and is a graduate
of the MA in Creative Writing
from the University of East
Anglia. She teaches at UWC
This Place I Call Home
and lives in Cape Town.

Meg Vandermerwe
In this thought-provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others; ten
diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans during our
country’s challenging history. From an old widower who feels that his world is
unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled persecution
in 1930s Europe and now finds himself on a barren sheep farm in the Karoo, to
a Polokwane teacher confronted with the moral dilemma of xenophobia, This
Place I Call Home leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities.
“These brave imaginings take us into the heart-places of South Africans. Through
Vandermerwe’s fine writing we are enabled to talk about home, come home and
perhaps feel at home with(in) one another.” Antjie Krog
“This slim collection of stories packs a punch well above its weight. Humane,
compassionate and uncompromising, glinting with spirit and beauty, and written
with a rare combination of discipline and vivacity, it marks the debut of a gifted
writer.” Ali Smith

2010 “It is rare when a writer accurately captures the hopes and anxieties of an entire
COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES nation but everything is here in This Place I Call Home … Besides her obvious
ISBN 978-1-920397-02-9 versatility as a writer, Vandermerwe’s prose is deeply felt, compassionate and
148 pp sincere.” Mail and Guardian
 forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming fiction

Arja Salafranca is an award-

winning, widely published
writer of prose and poetry.
She is the Arts and Lifestyle
editor of The Sunday
Independent. She lives in
Johannesburg.
The Thin Line

Arja Salafranca
The stories in The Thin Line hook the reader from the first one, and reel you
in on that thin line. You will be haunted by the carefully drawn characters:
by Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, by Cleo in love with a married
man after all these years, and poor skinny Mark, as he sees his love teeter
away from him. Salafranca is an accomplished, award-winning writer, this long-
awaited collection is a box of jewels.
“Salafranca’s style in this collection is best described as cinematic. Each story
plays out like a camera lingering on minutiae which, brought together, tell the
reader a great deal about the characters and situations which form the subject
matter… The most striking - and refreshing - aspect of this collection is that it
bears no trace of the albatross that many South African writers find tethered to
their neck: the burden of our past, the issue of “representation”, and the pitfalls of
stereotyping and political correctness.” The Star
“The author tells the reader much about the human condition, about loneliness
and the desperate search for fulfilment in relationships, about “body loneliness”,
about how community dictates how we must look and love… For me the biggest
2010
COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES
bonus was that there is a strong consciousness of the structure of the short story
ISBN 978-1-920397-08-1 and an implicit reaction to the tradition of the short story.” Die Burger
220 pp
 non-fiction
Rosemary Smith
Swimming with
Cobras
Smith's life as an activist in the Eastern Cape
began when she moved from England with
her South African husband in the 1960s.
They made their home in Grahams-town
where they raised four children. As a mem-
ber of the Black Sash she participated in
events spanning 3 decades in an intensely
politicised province, her involvement made
her at home in this alien and strange land
Rosemary Smith could never have imagined the trajec-
tory her life would take the day she met her husband. She
would find herself in Grahamstown, at a crucial point in
South Africa’s struggle. Joining the Black Sash, the white,
women-led anti-apartheid organisation, of which she
would one day become a national vice president, gave her
the opportunity to engage with a country in, often violent,
transition.
Swimming with Cobras is a memoir about a journey to find
a foothold in a foreign land grappling with it’s own identity,
offering rare and important insight into a corner of South
Africa’s past.
2011 MEMOIR ISBN 978-1-920397-37-1
Dawn Garisch
Eloquent Body
Dawn Garisch is a doctor who writes, a
poet who walks, a researcher who dances.
She lives in Cape Town near the mountain
and the sea and has two grown sons. Her
last novel, Trespass, was nominated for the
Commonwealth Prize in Africa.
As both a medical doctor and a writer, Dawn Garisch has
lived a split life for many years. Finally, Eloquent Body
allows the two streams of her life to converge.
Through exploring both the science and poetry of the body,
she investigates how we can determine what to trust. She
suggests ways of developing a partnership with oneself,
which includes not abusing the very ground we live off
and stand on. In an engaging manner, Eloquent Body
offers a circumspect and quiet wisdom in response to the
instinctual need to find out who we are and why we are.
2011 MEMOIR ISBN 978-1-920397-39-5
 forthcoming non-fiction forthcoming
Available to
consult for free
online at http://www.
Phumzile Simelane scribd.com/doc/29265930/
Small-Publishers-
Catalogue-2010 and to

Book of African purchase as an e-book

for US$1.00. Hard copy

Names out of print.

Born in Mpumalanga, Phumzile Simelane-Kalumba,
graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1998 with
a BCom degree. She lived in the North East of England
with her family for 7 years. Whilst there, she developed
interest in South African Bantu names. She is currently
pursuing her Masters Degree in the Department of
Xhosa, University of Western Cape with special interest in
onomastics, which is part of African folklore.
2011 NON-FICTION ISBN 978-1-920397-34-0
The Small Publishers’ Catalogue (Africa) is an initiative that
grew out of a meeting held in August 2009 where a number
of Small Publishers met for two days in Johannesburg at
Museum Africa as part of Khanya College’s Winter School.
The Catalogue is intended to showcase the variety and
extent of small publishing in Africa. Because the project
was run on a shoe-string budget with no external funding
apart from the advertising in the catalogue (for which we
are very grateful) it is seen as a first step in developing
an African Small Publishers’ initiative and will hopefully
generate an online catalogue and further editions which
will include more of the small publishers that surely must
exist and thrive in Africa.
2010 96 pp ISBN: 978-1-920397-01-2
 non-fiction

Karen Lazar is an English

educator at the Wits School
of Education. Her MA and
Phd, both from Wits, are
in South African gender
studies. This is Karen’s first
volume of (first person) crea-
Hemispheres
tive non-fiction. Karen had a
stroke in 2001, from which
she has partially recovered.

Karen Lazar
“Home is as old as one’s skin but as elusive as an object seen through the wrong
end of a telescope.” It is this sense of a view, skewed, intangible, which echoes
throughout Karen Lazar’s Hemispheres. Waking in hospital after a post-operative
stroke, she finds one side of her body paralysed and her world knocked out of
kilter. Spatial, perceptual and subjective changes force her to view her new life in
facets. The fragmented view is made apparent by means of a triptych of clusters
that chart Karen's experience from Metamorphosis, through Rehabilitation and
Adaptation.
“A filigree of finely-crafted pieces, Hemispheres narrates the journey of re-
composing life, joy and love from a body made alien through stroke. Wry, ironic,
comic, joyous, desolate, celebratory, surreal, the mosaic of text reconfigures love
from loss; each subtle fragment a tessera against time.” Prof. Isabel Hofmeyr, African
Literature, Wits
“A book that pulses with quiet courage and celebrates it in others.” Joanne Fedler

2011 “Lazar’s collection gives hope and illumination about how to cope with the
CONTEMPORARY MEMOIR ‘thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to’. The reader is left with an enormous
88 pp respect for a Lazar’s literary skill and her inordinate courage.” – Litnet
ISBN 978-1-920397-24-1
 forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming non-fiction forthcoming

Alleyn Diesel taught

Co-published with Ma Thoko's Books
Religious Studies at UKZN
during the 90s, specialising
in Hinduism in KZN. In 2007
Wits University Press pub-
lished her anthology Shakti:
Stories of Indian Women in
South Africa. She is currently SAPPHO’S DAUGHTERS OUT IN AFRICA
an Honorary Research Fel-
low in Religious Studies.

Edited by Alleyn Diesel

"The stories in Reclaiming the L-Word: Sappho’s Daughters Out in Africa
eloquently deal with the depth and complexity of lesbian experiences and serve
to contradict stereotyping. The writers come from all walks of life, race groups
and religious persuasions. The book includes a photo essay by well-known
artist and activist, Zanele Muholi, and her article of lesbian rape in South Africa,
originally published by Agenda.
“This brave and moving collection of stories by South African lesbian women
from different backgrounds reminds us, again, that rights are never finally won
in legislatures or in court rooms. They are won by people exercising them. The
authors of the stories and poems in this book have done just that. They have stood
up to celebrate the dignity of lesbian women in South Africa. Each contribution
is different. And each intensely personal. And each one reminds us of the urgent
need for us to stop hate crime and to create a safe society for all LGBT South
Africans.” Kate O'Regan, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
“Moving lesbianism away from spectacle and the exotic, the collection emerges
2011
from the wellsprings of lived experience. It tells flesh and blood stories – stories
BIOGRAPHY of the values, loves, struggles and challenges of living in a society that continues
224 pp to perpetuate many myths, mythologies and misconceptions about lesbians.”
ISBN 978-1-920397-28-9 Dr Devarakshanam (Betty) Govinden
 non-fiction

Jane Katjavivi is a writer,

Namibian edition by Tigereye Publishing
publisher and influential book
development activist. She
was born in the UK, now a
naturalised Namibian. She
lives in Windhoek with her
husband.
Undisciplined Heart

Jane Katjavivi
When Jane Katjavivi becomes involved in London in support of change in
Southern Africa, she meets and marries a Namibian activist in exile. Moving
with him to Namibia at the time of Independence in 1990, she faces a new life
in a starkly beautiful country. Her husband is made Ambassador to the Benelux
countries and the European Union, and later Berlin, causing Jane to build a
new identity as the wife of an ambassador, and come to terms with her own ill-
health without her friends around her to support her. Set against the backdrop
of the historical, political and social development of newly independent Namibia,
Undisciplined Heart tells the story of Jane’s love for her family, friends and her
adopted country.
“Jane Katjavivi’s frank and intimate memoir of love and politics, of survival and
finding a way to make a home, shows that history is also what heals when it is
filtered through a loving heart and an open mind.” Margie Orford
“Undisciplined Heart is an uplifting and fascinating read. And while it is a detailed
memoir of the birth of a nation on one hand, it is also a tender exploration of one
2010 woman’s personal journey towards enlightenment and wisdom.” Janet van Eeden,
MEMOIR
ISBN 978-1-920397-04-3
Litnet
320 pp
 forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming non-fiction forthcoming

Na ‘n loopbaan in
Sponsored by the LW Hiemstra Trust
verpleegkunde en
gesondheidsnavorsing vestig
Hester van der Walt haar in
McGregor waar sy deesdae
brood bak vir die plaaslike
mark. Sy skryf graag poësie
Hester se Brood English
en kortverhale. Hester se edition to be
Brood het in 2009 verskyn. released in
2012

Hester van der Walt

Hester se Brood (Hester's Bread) is an honest and delicious down to earth
book that tells of the writer, Hester van der Walt's, passion for baking bread.
Set in McGregor in the Klein Karoo - where she bakes bread in a woodfired
oven - Hester se Brood reflects the writer's intuitive feeling for the connections
between the soul and food, particularly food that is prepared with care, according
to traditional principals and methods. A fine sense of humour, helpful hints and
mouth-watering recipes make this book as irresistible as the smell of bread fresh
from the oven.

Hester se Brood is ’n eerlike (en heerlike) plat-op-die-aarde boek wat vertel

van die skrywer, Hester van der Walt, se passie vir broodbak. Dit is gesetel in
McGregor in die Klein Karoo – waar sy brood in ’n houtbakoond vir die plaaslike
mark bak – en weerspieël die skrywer se intuïtiewe aanvoeling vir die konneksie
tussen siel en kos, veral kos wat met sorg, volgens tradisionele beginsels en
metodes, voorberei word. ’n Fyn sin vir humor, praktiese wenke en smul-lekker
2009 resepte, maak hierdie boek net so onweerstaanbaar soos die reuk van brood,
MEMOIR, COOKERY BOOK kraakvars uit die oond.
ISBN 978-0-9802729-8-7
192 pp
 non-fiction

Durban born, Malika Ndlovu

is a poet, performer, and
playwright whose works
have been performed both
locally and internationally.
She is a founder-member of
the women writers’ collec-
tive, WEAVE and is currently
curator of the Africa Centre’s
poetry project, Badilisha!

Malika Ndlovu
This book breaks the silence around stillbirth, often seen as a non-event,
something women are expected to “get over” as soon as possible. Invisible
Earthquake is placed in the wider South African context by Sue Fawcus,
who writes tenderly and expertly about stillbirth from the point of view of an
obstetrician, and by Zubeida Bassadien and Muriel Johnstone, social workers
who accompany women going through this shattering experience.
“Malika has created a piece of work that gives grief a voice. I know this will
bring solace to all those who read it, anyone who has lost any loved one will see
themselves in her words.” Joy McPherson, Founder Midwives Inc.
“Cape Town writer Malika Ndlovu has returned from London where her own
experience of stillbirth was shared with the public at the launch of a landmark
edition of international health publication The Lancet. Entitled the Lancet Stillbirth
Series, it contains the first ever collection of global estimates on stillbirths, and
Ndlovu’s voice has added to a groundswell of advocacy amongst international
organizations to bring the topic out of the shadows. Ndlovu’s book, Invisible
2009
Earthquake, is cross-referenced and quoted in the journal, while the author was
MEMOIR, POETRY interviewed by large media stables like Aljazeera and BBC radio during the
88 pp launch.” Tanya Farber, Cape Times
ISBN 978-0-9802729-3-2
 forthcoming
Khadija Heeger
Beyond the
Delivery Room
Khadija Tracey Carmelita Heeger was born in Cape Town,
South Africa, raised on the Cape Flats in the township of
Hanover Park. She explores poetry as theatre. In 2010 she
was commissioned to write a piece for the Wilvan Spanish
and Ballet Dance school’s Theatrical dance piece called
Dis!place which was performed over the human rights day
weekend at the District Six Museum in Cape Town. She is
currently part of a research team at District Six Museum
around Reminiscence Theatre, where she is laying the
foundations for the production of her piece Blood Words.
Although she has been published in many publications,
this will be Khadija’s first collection of poems.
2011 ISBN 978-1-920397-36-4
poetry forthcoming forthcoming
Jenna Mervis
Jenna Mervis is a poet and freelance writer
living in Cape Town. Her work has been
featured in several South African journals
including Carapace, Green Dragon, New
Contrast, New Coin and the 2009 PEN
Studzinski Literary Award anthology New
Writing From Africa. Born and schooled in
Durban, Jenna studied Journalism at Rhodes
University and obtained an MA in Creative
Writing from the University of Cape Town.
There are degrees of loss.
Mostly the loss of oneself in another:
myself in you.
I catch myself
grasping
for the next skin.
From ‘Shedding Skin’
These are poems of unfolding. A brain in limbo; a
mother’s warnings, unheeded; the diving and swimming
in life; fiancés who evolve into husbands; a child not yet
conceived; poems birthed so that the reader follows the
evolution of a word into something tangible, erect, alive.
2011 76 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-33-3
 poetry
Margaret Clough
Margaret Clough grew up in Wellington.
After studying at UCT, she worked as a
Science teacher, soil chemist and food
technologist. She has been published in
Litnet, South Africa Writing and Carapace.
Funny, true, pellucid – At Least the Duck Survived offers a
series of lyrical observations about old age, retirement and
approaching death; about Tai Chi classes, dogs, lesbian
aunts, grandchildren, bicycles and symphony concerts.
In its unassuming charm, perfect understatement,
succinctness, attentiveness, generosity and wry humour,
Margaret Clough’s poetry proves Virginia Woolf’s dictum
that ‘Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his
life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.’
Irresistible reading. Finuala Dowling
2011 48 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-85-2
Dawn Garisch
Dawn Garisch is a doctor who writes, a
poet who walks, a researcher who dances.
She lives in Cape Town near the mountain
and the sea and has two grown sons. Her
last novel, Trespass, was nominated for the
Commonwealth Prize in Africa.
Most of the poems in this collection had earlier lives in
New Coin, New Contrast, Scrutiny2, Carapace, Fidelities,
Green Dragon and Ons Klytlie.
“There is a balance of emotion and craft in Garisch’s poetry,
a seamless welding of raw experience and self-observation,
of music and thought. She writes the most personal spaces,
always lit by her wry, focused understanding.” Ken Barris
“Garish’s poems reveal a warm, keen eye for the intricacies,
delicacies and difficulties of language and love.” Tania van
Schalkwyk
“The motif of the body is central to Garisch’s work; …
it is a place of sustenance, and offers the possibility of
transcending grief.” Alan Finlay
2011 56 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-32-6
 forthcoming
Sarah Frost
Sarah Frost is a single mother to a six year
old boy. She works as an editor for Juta
Legalbrief, Durban. She has completed an
MA in English Literature, and also a module
on Creative Writing, UKZN. She has been
published in various SA journals, and also
some in the US.
Conduit is a book of pared-down poems, graphically
tracking a young woman's journey from the lonely spaces
of childhood to the creative, powerful realm of womanhood.
Restrained and earnest, these poems grapple with the
experiences of being a daughter, mother and lover.
“These are poems of drowning and coming up again. Of
surviving with lungs that breathe water and sunlight.
These are poems of longing and loss. Of searching for a
foothold in a world where all slides and changes. Sarah
Frost is a clear, strong, exciting new voice in South African
poetry. Read her.” Kobus Moolman
“Frost writes with a bright perspicacity threaded through
growing awareness of the universal truths hidden in the
smallest details of life.” Janet van Eeden, Litnet
2011 64 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-27-2
poetry forthcoming forthcoming
Co-published with Pindrop Press (UK)
Michelle McGrane
Born in Zimbabwe in 1974, Michelle
McGrane spent her childhood in Malawi
and moved to South Africa with her family
when she was fourteen. She lives in Johan-
nesburg and is the author of two previous
collections.
“Every poem in The Suitable Girl grabs the reader
immediately and then proceeds to take her, by a surprising
route, to its strange conclusion, taking in much wit, irony,
lyricism and sensual detail on the way. These are trips well
worth the taking.” Joanne Limburg
“Michelle McGrane’s The Suitable Girl shows a sophisticated
range of reference together with a powerful and moving
emotional address. There is great technical range here
which includes prose poems alongside sinewy lyrics;
elegy jostles with imaginative sci-fi, humour with horror
in language which is often as gorgeous as it is precise.”
Ian Duhig
2011 50 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-26-5
 poetry
Kerry Hammerton
Kerry Hammerton is a poet, writer and alter-
native health practitioner. Her poetry has
been published in Carapace, New Contrast
and New Coin, online at Litnet and Incwadi.
She has also been a contributor to The
Empty Tin Readings (May 2010) and The
Poetry Project.
“Hammerton’s poetry tells stories we never tire of
living and reliving especially when told new. Her light,
sometimes witty, understated control of words, make this
telling deliciously new.” The Cape Times
“Hammerton is an anatomist of romantic love, from
the rumpled hotel sheets of lust to the shared tattoos of
intimacy. With its roller-coaster ride of erotica, sensuality,
heartbreak and laugh out loud hilarity, These are the lies I
told you is a debut volume destined to break sales records.
The Marian Keyes of poetry has arrived.” Finuala Dowling
“Hammerton’s poetry ranges over the themes of relation-
ships, of that often difficult thorn-strewn path of love
gained, and then love lost. But it’s her amusing, wry funny
voice that is such a delightful surprise. Her poetry is amus-
ing, a little droll and, laugh-out-loud funny.” Arja Salafranca
2010 76 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-22-7
Ingrid Andersen
Ingrid Andersen’s poetry has been widely
published in local literary magazines. Her
first collection of poems, Excision, was
published in 2005. She is the founding
editor of Incwadi, a South African online
journal of poetry and photography.
“Andersen’s poems fuse the best of Imagism with a heartfelt
compassion; with a few well-chosen words, she can turn
the rawness and imprecision of emotion into poems that
reach simultaneously for clarity and for the reader’s heart.
She is generous, careful, and passionate.” Fiona Zerbst
“Ingrid Andersen writes poems for an ‘age of loneliness’.
With words of powerful simplicity, this book cuts open
the heart and mind of the reader, stitches and sometimes
mends. Darting lightly in and out of life’s small and lonely
spaces and places, her quiet truths offer respite from the
world’s noise.” Tania van Schalkwyk
“Meditations on love, loss, family and faith, the poems in
Ingrid Andersen’s second collection gleam with humanity
and insight. Each poem in Piece Work is precisely crafted
and builds a mosaic of an attentive life.” Michelle McGrane
2010 72 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-07-4
 forthcoming
Beverly Rycroft
Beverly Rycroft is a graduate of UCT and
Wits. She worked as a teacher before
turning full time to writing and journalism.
Her poems have been published in local
literary magazines such as Carapace, New
Coin and scrutiny2. Missing is her first
collection of poems.
“From the first poem, I was drawn in and found myself
devouring these poems hungrily. Rycroft takes the intimate
nature of her life and shapes the experience into deeply-
crafted works. Her poetry is accessible, vital and necessary:
a fine debut.” The Star
“This astonishingly moving debut collection reads
compellingly as one complete story. Missing covers
the archetypal journey from sickness and near-death
transformation and hope. Rycroft wears her exquisite poetic
technique lightly - though rich in deftly-crafted images, the
poems are profoundly inviting, readable, memorable. I
could not put it down.” Finuala Dowling
“The poet works through the horror of the initial diagnosis
to a mute acceptance of the brutal illness which threatens
everything she treasures”
2010 80 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-06-7
poetry forthcoming forthcoming
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a multi-award-
winning writer, performer and editor. She
lives in Johannesburg with an assortment
of animals and her son.
The Everyday Wife is Phillippa Yaa de Villiers’ her second
volume of poetry, she unravels the security blanket of
workaday routines, exposing the soul of the quotidian.
“Phillippa Yaa de Villiers illuminates relationships of
many kinds and intensities – between lovers, children and
parents, the politics of emotion shared and remembered
and confronted, sustained across the distance of place or
memory.” Margaret Busby
“This poet takes the blood and guts of her experiences,
such as her childhood rape; her black self rejected by her
white adoptive family; her anger at prejudice encountered
– all experiences are wrenched from the poet’s heart and
shaped into meaning through explosive words.” Litnet
2010 92 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-05-0
 poetry
Melissa Butler
Melissa Butler lives in Cape Town and
Pittsburgh, PA. She has a Masters degree
in Curriculum Theory from Penn State
University and a Masters degree in Creative
Writing from the University of Cape Town.
removing is her first book of poetry.
“In these poems Melissa Butler has the unique ability to
take almost anything that happens to catch her eye or to
figure in her mind’s eye—these can range from a bowl to a
hadeda, from the concept of edges to the cusp of a silence—
and make it speak volumes not only about itself, but about
us in our human lives. Such are her poetic gifts; and such is
the quality of this remarkable debut.” Stephen Watson
“The experience of reading the poems in removing is,
wonderfully, one of a late-night conversation with a warm,
imaginative, thoughtful, observant and compassionate
friend. In pellucid language and deeply satisfying images
of the real, Melissa Butler manages to talk about the great
questions of humanity as lightly and easily as if she were
tossing out a picnic blanket.” Finuala Dowling
2010 48 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-19-7
Funded by the Cape 300 Foundation
Sindiwe Magona
Sindiwe Magona is a multi-award winning
author of plays, essays, novels, memoirs,
educational books for children and poetry.
Please, Take Photographs is her first col-
lection of poetry.
From the languid innocence of the poems about her village,
to her shattering images of Africa at war, Magona leads
you headlong into her fireside circle where archetypes
flicker like shadows on a face that has seen, and been.
This collection is defiant and tender, horrific and homely,
at once irreverent, outspoken and beautiful.
“Now, at the peak of her form, Sindiwe Magona gives us
poetry– the most difficult art form of all to get right, but like
an arrow to the heart when they succeed.” Jane Raphaely
“Sindiwe Magona’s debut collection, Please, Take
Photographs, stands out as a remarkable testimonial of a
journey travelled through time and possibilities.” Karina
Magdalena Szczurek , Sunday Independent
2009 80 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-5-6
 forthcoming
Helen Moffett
Helen Moffett is a freelance editor, author
and academic. She has lectured as far
afield as Trinidad and Alaska, but calls
Cape Town home. Strange Fruit is her first
collection of her own poems.
Strange Fruit is a courageous debut with a remarkable
range in theme and tone, from the nostalgic to the comedic
and bawdy, from angry, melancholic to steadfast and
comforting.
“In this reflective collection Helen manages to capture
images of loss, ageing and infertility that are at once
funny, heartbreaking and thought-provoking. A love of
nature shines through on every page and our thoughts
are allowed to transcend the urban spaces we occupy. The
poems are honest, forthright and powerful. Join Helen on
this expedition of the senses.” The Book Lounge, Cape Town
“Your voice sparkles with humour and passion and is
blessed with intelligence, incredible clarity and verve.”
Yaba Badoe, writer and documentary film-maker, UK
2009 56 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-6-3
poetry forthcoming forthcoming
Fiona Zerbst
Fiona Zerbst was born in Cape Town in
1969. She has travelled widely and cur-
rently works as a freelance journalist and
lives in Rustenburg. Oleander is her fourth
volume of poetry.
Oleander explores life’s complexities, both beautiful
and poisonous – love, death, art, the aftermath of war
and genocide, travel, religion, revelation. More wide-
ranging than Zerbst’s previous volumes, Oleander charts
experiences through which the self may be transformed.
“In Oleander, Fiona Zerbst’s lyrical voice reveals itself – not
for the first time, she has long been evident as an interpreter
of her private and public worlds — but yet again strongly,
freshly. Her continual reinvention of the self – and self-
consciousness about the frame and objects of the invention
– is perhaps more fully present than in any other young
contemporary poet in South Africa.” Peter Wilhelm
2009 56 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-7-0
 poetry
Funded by the Cape 300 Foundation
Joan Metelerkamp
Joan Metelerkamp is the author of seven
books of poems: Towing the Line (1992),
Stone No More (1995), Into the day
breaking (2000), Floating Islands (2001),
Requiem (2003), Carrying the Fire (2005),
and Burnt Offering (2009).
Burnt Offering is Joan Metelerkamp’s seventh collection
of poems. Like all of Metelerkamp’s work, these generous
poems draw on the details of family and rural life, dreams,
landscapes and journeys and weave together, with her
distinctive energy and passion.
“Burnt Offering is compelling reading, it sweeps one away
like a riptide does.“ Moira Richards, poet and reviewer
“I loved Joan’s collection which I found at once immediately
readable, dazzling, fragile, and formidable. Beautiful
journeys into the need to love, to speak, to understand
and simultaneously to travel beyond the boundaries that
constrain language.” Stacy Hardy, poet and journalist
2009 96 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-4-9
Azila Talit Reisenberger
Azila Talit Reisenberger is an award win-
ning author who has had poetry and short
stories published internationally and in SA.
She is a senior lecturer in Hebrew & Jewish
Studies at UCT.
Azila Talit Reisenberger is a Bible scholar, a rabbi, a
mother, a wife, and a poet. In all these selves she grapples
with translating her life from Hebrew to English and back
again. Life in Translation is full of wry humour, longing,
bitterness, sweetness, playfulness, and subversions of
traditional meanings and texts – a delightful book that
charms and surprises anew with each reading.
“Not to be heard. Not to be understood. Azila Reisenberger’s
poetry makes us overwhelmingly aware how often we
have to translate ourselves in order to matter.” Antjie Krog
2008 64 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-1-8
 forthcoming poetry forthcoming forthcoming

Megan Hall

Megan Hall is a graduate of UCT. Her writ-

ings have been widely published in South
African literary magazines. She works in the
publishing industry.

The poems in Megan Hall's debut collection combine Modjaji Books and Hands-On titles are
a dark humour and terrible grief with a lightness and available for purchase as printed books
restrained sensuality. Her language has the qualities of
dance: uninhibited and polished, accomplished and vivid.
and e-books from online booksellers
Fourth Child shows a poet courageously facing deep Amazon.com, Kalahari.net; Loot.co.za,
feelings while being committed to accurate writing, making LittleWhiteBakkie.co.za and others.
beautiful and living things out of the fabric of loss, grief,
and emptiness.
“The tone of Fourth Child is cautious, carefully muted,
but freighted with much emotion. A concealed sensitivity
is unpeeled, poem by poem, until the reader is left with
a knowledge not held before.” Fiona Zerbst in The Sunday follow us on
Independent

56 pp ISBN 978-0-9802729-0-1
 HANDS-ON BOOKS
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Athlone, 7760
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 hands-on books forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming forthcoming

Colleen Higgs launched

Modjaji Books, the first pub-
lishing house for southern
African women writers, in
2007. Her first collection of
poetry, Halfborn Woman,
was published in 2004. She
Lava Lamp Poems
lives in Cape Town with her
partner and her daughter.

Colleen Higgs
“The poems are cut with a bald, bare-blade honesty, a mind that makes unusual
matches. Colleen fits apartheid paranoia with stubborn partying, then sums up
an insane epoch in a sentence, ‘One day the pool opened to all.’ This last line of
‘my Yeoville’ is the ending of furtiveness, fear and zealous defiance. … The book
is an experience of heat, luminescence, and the wackiness of existence. It is the
experience of being mesmerised, in confidence, no drugs involved, watching that
lava lamp.” Tracey Farren
“The poems in Lava Lamp are compelling: at once conversational and uncanny.
Colleen Higgs tells the truth but tells it slant, insisting on the singularity of
everything that is familiar — domesticity, marriage, motherhood, family. The
sequence of poems set in Johannesburg is captivating.” Finuala Dowling, poet and
creative writing teacher
“Alternating between the most economical of free verse and the most elastic of
prose-poetry, Higgs shows a dazzling facility with both mediums. Her poems
reach into the past, isolating long-gone moments and imbue them with talismanic
significance. Humour runs through the collection like a glowing thread – from
the gentle and affectionate ‘an ode to Perry’ to the utterly female satire of ‘on
2011 wanting a washing machine’ and ‘where these things lead’, to the dark undertow
POETRY of ‘blaming Lulu’ and the bitter pill of ‘excuses’.” Fiona Snyckers, author of Trinity
56 pp Rising and Trinity on Air
ISBN: 978-1-920397-25-8
 hands-on books

Finuala Dowling is a poet,

novelist and creative writing
teacher. Her first collection, I
flying, won the Ingrid Jonker
Prize, the second, Doo-Wop
Girls of the Universe, was joint
winner of the Sanlam Prize for
Difficult to Explain
poetry, and her third, Notes
from the dementia ward, won
the Olive Schreiner Prize.

Edited by Finuala Dowling

Difficult to Explain is more than just an anthology of highly accessible, striking,
funny, quirky, tender and moving poems. It is also a much-needed companion
for poets and teachers, offering a series of inspirational exercises as well as
memorable reflections on the art of teaching creative writing. An essential book
for readers, writers and teachers of poetry.

Poet and creative writing teacher Finuala Dowling has put together a collection
of the best poems that have emerged from her current and recent poetry
workshops. The collection includes a new, unpublished poem by Finuala as well
as contributions by established writers who have attended her classes – Beverly
Rycroft, Colleen Higgs, Kerry Hammerton, Karin Schimke & Consuelo Roland.
“Not only does she create poetry that’s easy to read and looks deceptively easy
to write, but she’s generous in her sharing and encouragement that yes, you too,
can write poems. Many poems in Difficult to Explain are tagged with foot-noted
scraps of workshop discussion or tweakings that helped polish the piece into final
2010 form.” Moira Richards
POETRY
128 pp
ISBN 978-1-920397-23-4
 hands-on books
Robin Winckel-Mellish
Robin Winckel-Mellish lives in the Nether-
lands and runs a poetry critique group in
Amsterdam. Her work has been published
in many international literary journals. Her
first collection, A Lioness at my Heels, ex-
plores the restlessness of living in Europe
and being African.
The hemispheric pull between Europe and Africa and the
restlessness that results from inhabiting both worlds is
reflected in A Lioness at my Heels. Robin Winckel-Mellish
reconciles the muted tones of her Europe with the riotous
colour of Africa. The immediacy, vividness and dustiness
of the harsh African sun is carefully offset by the softer
quality of the Netherlands. All poems are mediated and
considered in the light of a spiritual home.
2011 44 pp ISBN 978-1-920397-43-2
forthcoming forthcoming
Colleen Higgs
Looking for
Trouble
Colleen Higgs launched Modjaji Books
in 2007, the first publishing house for
southern African women writers. Her poetry
collection, Halfborn Woman, was published
in 2004 and Lava Lamp Poems in 2010.
She lives in Cape Town with her partner
and daughter.
“We were all trying to find meaning beyond what constituted
our lives – work, money, sex, politics, friendship, jols,
angst-filled phone calls, daily life.” Set in Yeoville in the
late 80s and early 90s, Looking for Trouble is about young
people as dysfunctional as the country they lived in. They
were striving to make their lives work, given the constraints
of the country and the repressive time in which they lived.
It wasn’t easy to take your life seriously in those days.
The speed of the subsequent transition to democracy
was enlivening. With a brightness and dark humour, these
stories reflect that time when everything was about to
change.
2011 ISBN 978-1-920397-42-5
2011|12