‘Our box met with a bit of a red wine incident …’ Joanne wrote close to midnight yesterday and sent the picture above. I don’t know details of the ‘incident’ – yet! – but I just love it that this was my confirmation of our incredible win last night at the HSS Awards! I was interviewing Tan Twan Eng (what a pleasure that had been!) earlier in the day and had a prior evening commitment, so I could not fly up for the awards ceremony, but Joanne was there to represent us. It was ‘like the Oscars’, according to her, and WE WON!
It is such a joy that we were recognised with the HSS Award for Best Fiction Edited Volume for our Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, FLUID: The Freedom to Be. I have the photograph, but it is still difficult to grasp that this wonderful thing happened to us. And it happened at the same time when Dawn Garisch won the HSS Award for Best Fiction Short Stories for her collection, What Remains. And Frankie Murrey won the HSS Award for Best Emerging Author in the Fiction Category for her debut, Everyone Dies. The stories we tell and nourish and publish are spreading their wings and doing remarkable things!
Glinka ‘posing’ for a Karavan Press photo.Mozart, outside, where he preferred to be, even in the rain.
She would have been sixteen today – my precious leap year kitten, the youngest of The Cats, my Furry Family. I cannot grasp the ‘would’ in this sentence, keep stumbling over words that have crept into my vocabulary and taken away so much: ‘attack’, ‘broken’, ‘puncture’, ‘let go’. Glinka, aka Birdie Cat, aka Kleinkat, who inspired the feisty little cat in André’s Philida and features in the acknowledgements of the Booker-longlisted novel, died on 18 January 2024, two days after she was attacked by a feral cat. A team of vets fought for her life, but we could not save her. The brave, beautiful Glinka.
Whenever Glinka saw Mozart, she greeted him with a nose kiss and her chirping meow. That is how I imagine she greeted him when he left us and joined her in Cat Heaven on 21 February 2024. I still misspell the word ‘tumour’, refuse to accept its cruel reality. Mozart hadn’t been well for quite a while, but it was difficult to diagnose the cause, and once we knew for sure, we could only make him comfortable. My Mom was there when he was born in Austria in the Mozart Year of 2006, and she was here when he died in my arms, with her and my brother Krystian holding us. Mr Mozart, as he was also known, the oldest of The Cats, was the wisest Furry One I’ve ever known. His resilience and fierce independence were a source of great inspiration to me and many others who knew him. He was blind for half of his life, but it never made a difference to how he wanted to live, free and wild, no matter what.
Friends console me by saying that I gave them a good life, but I keep thinking: no, it was the other way around. They gave me a good life by honouring me with their purrs and trust and choosing to share their incredible lives with me for so many, many years. I cannot express how deeply I feel their loss. I loved them with all my heart.
Ever since Mozart, Salieri and Glinka came to live here, I have always called our home Threecatfontein, or Driekatfontein, and this it will remain, even if it is just Salieri and me now, and two purring furry ghosts.
A few days ago, Duncan, a lovely Twitter acquaintance, tweeted the following quote:
Sometimes you don’t survive whole; you just survive in part. But, the grandeur of life, is that attempt. It’s not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can. — Toni Morrison
It was Nadine Gordimer’s 100th birthday this year. The Morrison quote reminded me of something she once said: I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.
As this year comes to an end, and I was actually planning to be in bed by now but find myself writing instead, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings running through my exhausted head and my brimming heart, but foremost are gratitude and pride.
It has been an extremely busy year, with Karavan Press growing from strength to strength, with insane additional work to pay (un)expected bills, with wonderful trips (on my own and with my love and family), with structural changes to home and life’s bureaucracy, and personal and professional explorations (I have taken on too much, and I did fail and let a few balls fall despite my best attempts; I hope to pick them up properly in the new year again). But in a way it has been the quietest year since André passed away. No reckless behaviour on my part, emotional chaos or accompanying numbness. Mostly calm and stability – both so welcome. I cannot claim to be unbroken, but I am learning to unapologetically take up space, to say no, to fight for what I need and want, to come into my own power and to honour myself – while still remaining kind, nurturing and giving as is my nature. I am trying to understand forgiveness. I have been dealing with complex and heavy loss and grief for many, many years. I am learning to rely on my resilience not only to survive, but to thrive – to see my strength as an ally, not my greatest weakness. I have also finally made the decision to make my home my own; I cannot live in a museum, no matter how precious its legacy. The responsibility has been weighing me down for almost a decade, and it is time to share the burden and joy of it with others.
Globally, there is too much shattering to comprehend. The end of this year has been marked by additional personal loss: André’s sister Marita passed away. My cousin was caught in an avalanche – he survived, but the friend he was with did not. A loved one was diagnosed with a terrible disease. I am haunted by the pain and anxiety of loss.
The Furry Ones are all ancient, but I have declared them immortal, and we continue sharing a home at Driekatfontein. We have many kind and wonderful people in our lives. And laughter. And so many stories.
No one asked me officially for my read of 2023, but it is without any doubt Lyndall Gordon’s The Hyacinth Girl: T. S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse. Here I am reading it in the Kgalagadi during an unforgettable trip to Botswana with my love – we have been together for seven years. May this adventure continue for many to come!
WOMAN ZONE Cape Town hosted their end-of-the-year party earlier today and celebrated another year of inspiring community building. We shared stories of stress and serenity, and Nomfundo Macuphe of Blissful Wellness Clinic donated two massage vouchers (for destressing) for a giveaway. Singer/songwriter Trudy Rushin entertained us with her beautifully soothing voice. We heard 22-year-old Tarah Jaftha speak about her first children’s book, Welcome to Cape Town. Everyone went away with a new book they could choose from a generous pile. And Stiletto & Flowerbaked yummy cupcakes for us. Many guests donated body products and toiletries for the Ons Plek Project, residential homes for young girls in need. Woman Zone will be giving them two copies of the invaluable book by Dr Mpume Zenda – Mommy My Body’s Changing.
Thank you WOMAN ZONE for everything that you do – our lives are so much richer because of you!
After the success of FLUID: The Freedom to Be, the Short.Sharp.Stories project returns with a new theme: YOLO. Joanne Hichens and I look forward to reading your stories and publishing the most exciting interpretations of the theme in the next Short.Sharp.Stories anthology!
The most intensely felt and memorable experiences of our lives involve the ties that bind us to other people. In this performance John Maytham reads classic and little-known poems about families – poets’ personal memories of birth, child-rearing and death, marriage and divorce, partnership and breakup, words uttered in anger and words uttered in love. Compiled by Finuala Dowling, this moving, funny and deeply true script reminds the audience of what it means to be someone’s child, parent, sibling, spouse, or simply a fellow human being.
Earlier this year, Debi Thomas Hawkins published her first book, Becoming a Mermaid Sister, a memoir about how the sea saved her at a time when she needed it the most. What she did not know at the time of the official publication of the book was that life was about to throw her a curveball that would take many months to recover from – but that is another story. When I saw Debi a few weeks ago, she shared what had happened to her with me, and told me how her memoir got lost in the chaos, how it never even had a proper launch. I was shocked that I did not even know it existed. But I knew how much Debi supports the literary community as a reader and a member of the Friends of the Fish Hoek Library who organise the fabulous Blown Away by Books, and I immediately thought that there was a simple way we could say ‘thank you’ for everything that she has done for all of us. So I bought a copy of Becoming a Mermaid Sister and asked Debi whether I could assist her to organise the launch of this beautiful, inspiring memoir. Luckily, she said yes.
Unsurprisingly, after reading the book, I dreamt all night long about swimming in the sea, and I woke up feeling a longing to head to the nearest beach. I love the sea and I love swimming. Unlike Debi, who grew up in landlocked Zim, I grew up in a country with a magnificent sea and was introduced to its wonders as a small child. Debi moved to the Cape and the seaside only sixteen years ago, and found the courage to begin engaging with the sea only recently – when it was forbidden to do so during the deepest darkness of lockdown. It was a time in her life when she was experiencing the challenges of midlife as a woman and a mother, when she lost her job and income during the pandemic and tried to desperately reimagine herself in the new circumstances. In Becoming a Mermaid Sister, she recalls the disastrous first swim, when she and her husband Roger, aka The Pirate, decided to brave the lockdown regulations and found a secluded spot to go for a forbidden swim. They weren’t caught (not that time!), but Debi was left with “a love bite from the sea” after the adventure. Finding awe and solace in the sea, Debi and her “family bubble” found their Secret Beach and continued to swim. A traumatic arm fracture in her childhood and the resulting loss of full control over her arm made Debi fearful, and simple tasks that most of us take for granted became challenging in the everyday for her. Communing with the sea allowed her to face those fears and find a new side to her already amazing resilience. Meeting other women of the sea who practice cold-water immersion and paddling opened entirely new realms of possibility. They call themselves Mermaid Sisters. Their ethos is “kindness, support, and an unspoken trust circle.” Together, they create a space of safety that allows each member to thrive. Debi’s memoir tells the story of self-transformation that she calls “kick-in-the-butt-mation”. It is the story of how courage allowed her to discover the physical, psychological and emotional benefits of the sea, and it is a celebration of community.
“I am the champion of my life,” Debi says in Becoming a Mermaid Sister. And so she is, and she inspires all of us to become the champions of our lives.
Let’s celebrate this incredible woman and her wonderful book! See you at the Tokai Public Library on 28 November!
In keeping with the Noordhoek Art Point Gallery‘s theme for November — the Flow of Water — this month’s Salon Hecate will feature the recently published Short.Sharp.Story anthology, Fluid: The Freedom To Be.
For Fluid, South African writers were given this intriguing prompt: “In a FLUID state, nothing is fixed, matter can flow easily — between borders and boundaries, between cultures, between genders — everything is possible, porous, playful. In this world, increasingly conservative and restricted, we embrace the fluid nature of humanity. We grow, we change course, we discover more about who we are.” The best twenty stories in response were published in this collection. In reviewing it, author Jen Thorpe said: “I am always searching for writing that challenges me to try new techniques, forms and genres, and that takes on subjects I hadn’t considered. This collection does just that.”
Together with three Fluid contributors, I was asked to speak about the collection at the next Salon Hecate event. Contributors will read brief extracts from their stories. One of them, local artist Alex Latimer, will talk about the “fluidity” and overlap of being both a visual artist and illustrator, and an author. Vuyokazi Ngemntu will speak about the shades (literally) of identity for another perspective on what it means to be fluid. And Anna Hug will read from her shocking and entertaining story featuring perfume — also a fluid. Additionally, author Athambile Masola will read her poetry in both English and isiXhosa, to show us another form of fluidity — translation.
About the authors
Karina Szczurek
Karina Szczurek is an author, memoirist, reviewer and the driving force behind Karavan Press. She lives in Rosebank, Cape Town, and has won too many awards for her writing to list here. She looks very fetching in a witch’s hat.
Alex Latimer
Alex Latimer is an artist and illustrator who lives in Fish Hoek. His picture books are published around the world, and his stories have won or been shortlisted for the Short Story Day Africa prize and the Commonwealth prize. He has published a novel and two apocalyptic sagas, South and North, as one half of Frank Owen (the other half being Diane Awerbuck, whose work also appears in Fluid).
Vuyokazi Ngemntu
Vuyokazi Ngemntu is a writer-performer who lives in Nyanga. She uses a wide range of performances of words (poetry, ritual, song and more) to look at trauma and inequality, and to inspire healing. Her short stories have won or been shortlisted for a number of prizes in Africa.
Athambile Masola
Athambile Masola is an academic, archival expert and poet who lives in Muizenberg. She lectures in Historical Studies at UCT, and her PhD and primary research focuses on black women’s life writing. Her debut poetry collection, Ilifa, was published in 2021.
Anna Hug
Anna Hug, an author and editor who lives in Kommetjie, has had her stories published in South African literary journals, and has been longlisted for the Myslexia fiction prize.
Salon details
Date and time: TUESDAY (note: not our usual Monday!) 14 November, 5.30 for 6pm, until 7pm. Entrance is free, and all are welcome.
Please join us for small snacks and a glass of wine or juice.
Got a question about this event or interested in a particular piece you’ve seen? Get in touch with the Gallery at info@noordhoekartpoint.co.za or call 0835642493.
Karina Magdalena 