Karavan Press
What does your company do?
Founded nearly seven years ago, Karavan Press is an independent publishing house based in Cape Town and aims to publish books readers can be passionate about, of any genre, any length. Until recently, the focus has been on fiction, non-fiction and poetry, but the list has expanded to children’s books and I am about to publish our first graphic novel and collection of plays. The majority of authors Karavan Press publishes are women. It is important for me to nurture authors and their creativity, establish strong bonds between writers and readers, and offer a literary home for those who treasure words and stories. I cannot and do not want to imagine a world without them. Excellence, integrity, and love for the book as an object are the cornerstones of Karavan Press.
The publishing house offers a home for stories that are attractive to local and international readers, with a few of our titles also published in the UK and the US. The stories that Karavan Press titles tell – from the Women’s Prize longlisted 'Crooked Seeds' by Karen Jennings to 'Theatre Road', Sindiwe Magona's biography of renowned singer and actor Thembi Mtshali-Jones – are strongly, but not exclusively, focused on South African themes, yet all have universal appeal. One of our recent bestselling titles, the prescient novel by Andrew Brown, 'The Bitterness of Olives', winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2024, is set in the Middle East and has been instrumental for many readers in understanding the current developments in the region.
Karavan Press has published established writers (such as Sindiwe Magona, Dawn Garisch, Joy Watson, Andrew Brown and Karen Jennings) and emerging voices (such as Lethokuhle Msimang, Sipho Banda, Beatrice Willoughby, Shari Daya, Anna Stroud and Melissa A. Volker). They are regularly invited to all local literary festivals and nominated for all the prestigious awards in South Africa and abroad – UJ Prize, Sunday Times Literary Awards, SA Literary Awards, HSS Awards, Booker Prize, Women’s Prize – with Dawn Garisch and Alex Latimer winning HSS Awards for Best Fiction Short Stories in 2023 and 2024, and Frankie Murrey and Anna Stroud winning for Best Fiction Emerging Writer at the same time, as well as Karen Jennings and Nick Mulgrew winning the K. Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award in 2022 and 2023 respectively. These latter wins were particularly thrilling to us because of their recognition of writers under 40. It is crucial for me to work with young voices and give them a platform for exploration. A recent result of this endeavour is a collection of personal essays to be published in September: 'Burning Down the House', an exploration of feminism in the twenty-first century as experienced by young academics.
Karavan Press published the first book in 2019; most of its existence has been impacted by the COVID-19 lockdown. Despite these challenges, I have managed to publish close to sixty highly acclaimed books (from four in 2019 to seventeen titles last year). We are also distribution partners for such titles as, among others, 'Intimacy and Injury: In the Wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa' edited by Nicky Falkof, Shilpa Phadke and Srila Roy (Manchester University Press), 'Panya Routes: Independent Art Spaces in Africa' by Kim Gurney (Motto Books), 'Glass Tower' by Sarah Isaacs and 'Sand Roses' by Hamza Koudri (both Holland House Books, respectively winner and runner-up of the inaugural The Island Prize, established for debut novelists in Africa). We have also partnered with such project as Short Story Day Africa and Short.Sharp.Stories, both dedicated platforms for writers from South Africa and the rest of the continent. We just held our fourth Karavan Press Literary Festival and have embarked on the third Karavan Stories Workshop and Anthology Project in April.
I work with a small team of dedicated freelance editors, proofreaders and designers, and with the local distributor, Protea Distribution, but Karavan Press remains mostly a one-woman enterprise. Going from strength to strength in spite of adverse economic conditions and strong competition from local and overseas big trade publishers, Karavan Press remains true to its vision of telling stories that matter and move.
What is your biggest success?
Offering a publishing home to books by young, super-talented writers such as Lethokuhle Msimang and Shari Daya. And having the books I publish win many of the prestigious literary awards in South Africa, such as the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award, the K. Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award and the HSS Awards in different categories, as well as having books I co-published with a UK publisher on the Women's Prize and Booker Prize longlists.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Cashflow when faced with a much higher demand for our books than initially budgeted for, especially now when printing costs are rising and our award-winning books are becoming more and more desirable. Admittedly, it is a wonderful challenge to have, because it means that our books are selling above average of what can be expected in the South African market.
