Swimming in a stream of voices

Maggie Davey

Jacana Media will be publishing the winning novel in the new EU Literary Competition. We spoke to Maggie Davey of Jacana Media - who will serve on the panel of judges for this prestigious award - about publishing and extra tidbits on the Literary Award.

1. How long has Jacana Media been in existence and what is at the heart of Jacana's vision for publishing "Earth Life Fiction"?

   Jacana as a publishing house has been going for over ten years now. It was started by Val Thomas as a primary health care and natural history publisher. We started a general publishing division two years ago, and we are now publishing in the region of 20 books a year.

   Jacana Media is one of the few independent publishers left in SA and independence informs everything about our publishing. We hope to be critical, informative and, above all, independent.

2. Name a few titles your media house has published?

   Hearing Visions Seeing Voices by Mmatshilo Motsei; Operation Vula by Conny Braam; In Tangier we Killed the Blue Parrot by Barbara Adair.

3. Which is/are closest to your heart?

   Impossible question! All of them represent something new, different, exciting, revealing.

4. What is the motivation behind the EU Literary Award?

   To promote new South African writing. [For more information see press release.]

5. How did Jacana Media become involved with this award?

   We have been publishing the Caine Prize for African Writing since its inception some years ago, and we have carved out a slice of the general market for new writing from all over Africa. I hope that we will be able to do the same for this prize.

6. You will represent Jacana Media on the panel of judges for the EU Literary Award. This award seems to foreground English as the creative language. Isn't it unfair in a country where the consensus seems to be that the indigenous languages should be developed?

   As a general publisher we publish only in English. Our lifeskills division publishes in all official languages of SA. Recently we published Hearing Visions Seeing Voices by Mmatshilo Motsei, and although MM wrote the book in English, some of her poetry which is included in the book is in Setswana, and we made a conscious decision not to translate these. It was in keeping, I think, with the spirit of the book. However, we specialise in writing in English in South Africa, in all its variations.

7. Will a similar competition be held in the future for other Southern African languages?

   I have not heard of any such plans.

8. Jacana Media will publish the winning entry in the EU Literary Award. What will be done if the winning entry is not yet publishable? Will the author be guided to publication?

   Of course. We publish writers rather than books, and the writer would have the benefit of our editorial expertise.

9. What is your strategy if this competition produces more than one exceptional work?

   Well, I think one of the happy results will be to identify up-and-coming writers. And we or other publishers would be sure to consider these writers for publication in the future.

10. Will a writer who has published, say, a single short story in an anthology, or who has published on the web, or who has published books in only, say, Afrikaans, or someone who has self-published a small portion of a novel, be eligible? Would any of these cases be considered as "a first, unpublished work of fiction in English"?

    We would certainly allow all of those people (short story writers, children's story writers, self-published authors and authors who have published in other languages but not English) to participate. We would exclude anyone who has published a full-length English novel through an established publisher anywhere.

11. Do you have the feeling that there are a host of undiscovered voices in South Africa? Are you expecting a new kind of writer/writing style to emerge?

    Yes, certainly, and interestingly - and this is happening in very many places throughout the world: more and more people are writing. The challenge will be for publishers, retailers, distributors and the general book-buying public to be receptive to those voices.

12. What are you looking for - what is going to make you sit up and take notice of a writer's work?

    I can speak only for myself, but I would be looking for excellent stories written beautifully.

13. If you receive 300 entries, will Nadine Gordimer be reading all 300 or will there be an initial screening process?

    Yes, there will be an initial screening process.

14. Would a young expatriate working in London, who has lived there for some time, be considered a legitimate entry?

    The rules state "resident in SA", so probably not.

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