Tag Archives: Karina M. Szczurek

Barefoot Arts Meander 2026 — Finding a Home for Your Story — Memoir Workshop with Karina M. Szczurek

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A new festival is starting on the Sunshine Coast in the Easter Cape and I have the pleasure of running a memoir workshop during its weekend (24-26 September 2026):

The Barefoot Arts Meander unfolds over the Heritage Day long weekend across Kenton-on-Sea and Boesmansriviermond – two neighbouring villages framed by the Kariega and Bushmans Rivers, unspoiled beaches, and the Eastern Cape’s easy, barefoot pace of life. We’re sharing four days with you: the best of our local artists, brilliant authors, theatre, and a local craft market. Whether you’re joining for a day or the whole long weekend, this is a festival best explored on foot, at your own pace.

Find out more: Barefoot Arts Meander

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

In the beginning there were stories without homes.

Karina M. Szczurek is the founder and publisher of Karavan Press. She lives in a Victorian house in Cape Town that holds a private library of some fifteen thousand books, spanning its creator André Brink’s own first published novel to editions centuries old. When the possibility of losing that home once loomed over her, she found herself searching for a different kind of home — one no one could ever take away. She realised, in the end, that a book itself is a kind of home away from home: a caravan, carrying you to unexpected places. It’s how Karavan Press got its name.

Born in Poland, Karina lived in Austria, the United States and Wales before finding a home in South Africa, where she met and married the author André Brink. She is the author of the memoir The Fifth Mrs Brink (2017) and the novel Invisible Others, longlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, as well as editor of several award-winning short story anthologies. In 2019, she founded Karavan Press, and now runs the Philida Literary Award and the Karavan Press Literary Festival. She lives in Cape Town.

In this intimate workshop, Karina draws on her years as a publisher, editor and memoirist — building a home for other people’s stories — to guide participants in finding a home for their own. Expect gentle, practical guidance on shaping memoir and personal narrative, honest feedback, and space to think about what your story needs in order to be told.

Held at a private home in Kenton-on-Sea. Refreshments and snacks will be served. Please bring your own writing instruments.

Details: Saturday, 26 September 2026, 14:00 – 17:00

Book here: Quicket

Books on the Bay 2026: An overview

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Stories make the world go round. Some turn it upside down; others, the right way round.

In a recent article for Institute of Art and Ideas News, Elleke Boehmer pointed out that the original iconic 1972 image of Earth taken from Apollo 17 that we know as the “blue marble” was tilted to put the northern hemisphere on top, whereas “Apollo 17’s camera had first pictured the planet as bearing the vast, white cap of Antarctica”. For the past few years, Boehmer’s creative and theoretical writing has been focused on reimagining the way we see the world. She argues that by shifting our perspective to the far southern hemisphere, we can discover a more wholesome and grounding way of being that does not neglect an essential frame of reference for understanding the ecological and sociopolitical reality we find ourselves in.

Boehmer launched her latest book, Southern imagining (Princeton & Wits UP), during her visit to South Africa earlier this month, and spoke to me about her novel, Ice shock (Karavan Press), at Books on the Bay, now in its fourth year. As one of the most southern literary festivals in Africa, Books on the Bay was the perfect occasion to begin dreaming from and in the South.

Ice shock is predominantly a love story, but it is also an environmental novel. In her incisive review of the book, Barbara Boswell mentioned the inescapable fact that “climate shapes destiny”. The story of Ice shock oscillates between the UK and the Antarctic, stopping a few times in South Africa in between. The love that binds the protagonists across the hemispheres is tested to the extreme and allows us to rethink our connectedness in personal and global terms, to understand how precarious our position is and to empower us to do something about it.

Books on the Bay took place between 13 and 15 March 2026 and hosted a myriad of amazing local and international literary stars. My festival began on Friday morning with an author whose writing has shaped and reshaped the Cape Peninsula – Finuala Dowling. Introducing her was one of the organisers of the festival, Darryl David. He said that Dowling not only is “one of the Far South’s most famous poets”, but should be declared as Poet Laureate in these parts of the world. Agreed!

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Continue reading: LitNet

Slices of Heaven: Open Book Festival 2024

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“Words don’t help with grief, but presence does,” said Alex Latimer, author of the short story “Death and rooibos”, included in his collection Love stories for ghosts. In the story, Death takes a young boy’s mother away and remains behind in the child’s life well into his adulthood – a strange, friendly, comforting presence having a cup of rooibos whenever he visits. Alex was one of the well over 100 authors speaking at this year’s Open Book Festival, which took place last weekend between 6 and 8 September at the Homecoming Centre in Cape Town. The session he was part of, “Love and other toxins”, also featured Shubnum Khan and Sven Axelrad, and was expertly chaired by Dela Gwala. I have loved all three of these authors for a long time, but collectively they stole my heart during that afternoon …

Continue reading: LitNet

Interviewing authors

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I have the huge honour of interviewing the following authors at upcoming literary festivals.

First up: Prince Albert Leesfees is taking place between 30 August and 1 September, and I will be interviewing Andrew Brown about his The Bitterness of Olives on Saturday, 31 August, at 10:15 a.m. I am not only looking forward to this conversation, but to returning to Prince Albert and the local Leesfees. More great memories will be made for sure.

Tickets: Prince Albert Leesfees

And then it’s Open Book time! Taking place between 6 and 8 September, the Open Book Festival is a highlight of every literary calendar. Karavan Press authors will be busy at the festival this year, and I can’t wait to listen to them all. I will be interviewing an author that I assist in distributing in South Africa, an Island Prize runner-up in the first year of the prize’s existence, Hamza Koudri. He will be on a panel with Damilare Kuku and Zibu Sithole and I have the privilege of chairing the session about WRITING SISTERS on Friday, 6 September, at 12 p.m. I interviewed Zibu at the festival last year and absolutely loved reading I Do … Don’t I?, the sequel to The Thing With Zola. And I can’t wait to meet Hamza and Damilare and to talk to them about their fascinating novels in the context of this topic that is very close to my heart (I only have one sibling, a brother, but he is the best sibling in the world, and I can’t imagine my life without him).

Tickets: Open Book Festival

Hope to see you at one or both of these events!

Kingsmead Book Fair 2024

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I have the privilege of chairing two sessions at the Kingsmead Book Fair this year on Saturday, 25 May.

12:30 – 13:30, Mackenzie 1| The body keeps score: tales from under the skin
Karina Szczurek (Hair: Weaving & Unpicking Stories of Identity) asks Kim Ballantine (Hot Tea and Apricots: A Memoir of Loss and Hope) if it’s smart to trust your gut.

14:30 – 15:30, Music Centre | No place to call home
Karina Szczurek (editor of Fluid: The Reason To Be) talks to Kobby Ben Ben (No One Dies Yet), Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu (Lucky Girl) and Buntu Siwisa (Paperless) about how it feels to be foreign.

Full programme: KBF 2024

Tickets: Webticket

Long live the short story!

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‘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!

Wow. Just wow!