It is with great sadness that LAPA’s personnel learned of the death of Cecilia Britz. She passed away on 12 December 2019.

Cecilia Britz was known for her enormous contribution to recreational fiction in Afrikaans.

Britz was once married to a diplomat, but eventually began working as a publisher. While at Perskor, under the influence of Franz Marx, she began to win back Afrikaans readers. There was significant support for the more taxing literary works in Afrikaans, but Afrikaans speakers read English when they wanted to relax. She set out to change that.

Marx made her understand that books had to be marketed as entertainment, and Britz began an in-depth study of how the market for American fiction works.

After Perskor was bought by the then Maskew Miller Longman, Britz worked as Huisgenoot’s story editor.

LAPA Publishers approached her and she worked for the company on a freelance basis. On December 1, 2004, she joined LAPA full-time.

Legends were born.

One of her biggest success stories was LAPA’s Romanza series.

Britz worked at LAPA until her retirement in 2018, but she told everyone she would ‘go crazy’ should she have to sit at home, so she continued with LAPA a contract basis. Behind the scenes, however, Britz was also training a next generation of publishers.

She was immensely very proud of her contribution to the tremendous growth in quality Afrikaans commercial fiction. As she approached her retirement, she would often display her wry sense of humour by declaring that she would be content with nothing but a statue in her honour. So, when the ATKV awarded her a special Woordveertje for her contribution to the publishing industry in 2018, she used the stage to say that she was grateful to ‘finally’ be given her statue.

Categories Afrikaans Fiction South Africa

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