Wow! That’s a wrap. This month has absolutely flown by and I hope that you have each found (at least) a few new books and authors that you’d like to keep track of and support. The South African book publishing industry remains quite small – a book is a bestseller with just a couple thousand copies.

Please buy South African womxn’s books, visit their websites, rate their books on GoodReads. We will all be eternally grateful.

Just a quick recap

• Day 1: An Introduction to the Month from me.
• Day 2: Makhosazana Xaba writes about her book Our Words, Our Worlds and Black South African Womxn Poets.
• Day 3: Jennifer Malec, editor of the Johannesburg Review of Books, writes about some of the incredible women who have written for them.
• Day 4: Thabiso Mahlape, founder of and publisher at Blackbird Books, writes about her experience of being a publisher.
• Day 5: Dorette Louw of BookDash writes about getting more books to more children across SA and shares some children’s books with powerful female protagonists.
• Day 6: I highlight some of South Africa’s literary awards and the womxn writers who have won them.
• Day 7: Dawn Garisch of the Life Righting Collective reflects on life writing in South Africa
• Day 8: Karin Schimke writes about the opportunities for more translation in South Africa
• Day 9: I share some amazing South African cookbooks
• Day 10: Sally Partridge reflects on the rainbow of talent in SA young adult writing.
• Day 11: Lorraine Sithole shares some of her favourite short story collections
• Day 12: Karina Szczurek of Karavan Press reflects on publishing and shares some incredible short story collections
• Day 13: I share some favourite feminist collections and books
• Day 14: Abdeah Davis shares some SA bookstagrammers to take note of.
• Day 15: I share some SA Queer literature to check out.
• Day 16: Terry-Ann Adams writes about Coloured literature and the chance to be remembered.
• Day 17: I interview Na’eemah Masoet, non-fiction publisher at Kwela.
• Day 18: I shared some of our amazing literary podcasts and festivals.
• Day 19: I shared my list of five years of South African womxn’s novels – that’s 245 books you should read right now. Stay tuned on my personal blog where I’ll be sharing even more than that.
• Day 20: I shared some South African womxn playwrights and their plays for you to look out for.
• Day 21: I interviewed two South African librarians about their libraries, collections, and favourite books.

So we’ve come to the end of our journey, but certainly not to the end of AMAZING writing by INCREDIBLE writers. Stay tuned.

Please feel free to reach out to me with any feedback and questions. You can reach me via my contact page, here.

This month’s blog is curated by Jen Thorpe.

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Jen Thorpe is a feminist writer. Her first novel, The Peculiars (2016), was long listed for the Etisalat Prize for Literature (2016) and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize (2017). Her second novel, The Fall, was published in July 2020. Thorpe has edited three collections of feminist essays – My First Time: Stories of Sex and Sexuality from Women Like You (2012); Feminism Is: South Africans Speak Their Truth (2018) and Living While Feminist (2020). Her writing has been published in Brittle Paper, Saraba Magazine, Jalada, and Litro. Find out more via https://jen-thorpe.com. Jen is also the host of the Living While Feminist Podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, or wherever you get your podcasts.