Today’s post comes to you from Tayla Mocke
Crossing Pages, Crossing Borders: An Exploration into the Movement of People, Stories, and Ideas
#ReadingAfrica turns 10 this year!
Catalyst Press launched the campaign back in 2017 because we wanted to celebrate just how vast and varied African literature really is. And every year since, more teachers, writers, librarians, booksellers, and literary magazines have joined in, until it’s become one of our favorite weeks of the year.
This year, #ReadingAfricaWeek follows the roads, oceans, and page-breaks that African literature has always traveled. Crossing Pages, Crossing Borders looks at migration and mobility not just as subject matter — the journeys characters take, the borders they cross, the homes they leave or make — but as something built into the very life of a book: how a manuscript written in one language and one place ends up translated, republished, and re-read continents away; how a diaspora writer carries two (or three, or more) homes onto a single page; how a story itself migrates from oral tradition to print to screen to social feed.
We’re asking: what does belonging look like when it’s written down? What happens to an idea when it crosses a border — political, linguistic, generational, or genre? Who gets to be a reader when the book itself has been on the move?
Across the week, we’ll spotlight books and voices that carry passports, or that write about people who do: immigrant stories, exile literature, diaspora memoirs, and the publishers, translators, and booksellers who make sure those stories don’t stop moving once they leave the writer’s hands. Because if there’s one thing this year makes clear, it’s that African literature was never meant to sit still.
And here’s a little extra incentive to join us live: attend all three live sessions and you’ll receive a code for a free ebook of your choice after the Week!
Live panels:
Language as Movement
How does translation carry stories across linguistic and cultural borders?
November 5 | 11AM-12PM EST
Intimate Geographies: A Poetry Workshop with Jane Kurtz
An hour-long workshop discussing poetic techniques, devices and uses for poetry such as journaling and expressing certain events and emotions.
November 6 | 8AM PST, 9AM MST, 6PM SAST | $5
Live Zoom Poetry Sit-in
Hear and see premium African poets read/recite/perform their work. Feel free to attend all three hours or just pop in for a few minutes.
November 7 | 4-7PM SAST, 7-10AM MST, 9AM-12PM EST
Written panels:
The Ghostly and the Real
Spirit worlds in African literature
November 2 | LitHub
Movement Within: Intra-African Mobilities
What is an African border, really, and what does it do to the people who cross it?
November 3 | Writing Africa
African Publishers
Publishing books that cross boundaries and borders
November 4 | World Literature Today
Catalyst Press Publicity & Marketing: Tayla Mocke is a Publishing Studies MA student at Wits University who loves exploring every corner of the storytelling ecosystem – editing, marketing, writing, all of it. She’s interned with the High Line Literary Collective, created sustainability campaign content for LIV Durban, and recently worked with Colleen Higgs at Modjaji Books on submissions and the monthly newsletter. When she’s not hopping between MA life and Catalyst publicity, she’s usually writing – either updating her online portfolio (Tayla Mocke | writing portfolio) or sharing reflections on everyday life on her Substack, Tuesdays (Tuesdays | Tayla Mocke | Substack).
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of GLLI.
