BlackBird Books is celebrating its 3rd Birthday with an event and a special offer!

Special offer

As part of the celebrations, you can buy three BlackBird Books books at Exclusive Books during the month of August and only pay for two!

The offer is available at Exclusive Books only, and only on selected Blackbird Books titles. While stocks last.

Event

Exclusive Books will be hosting a birthday event for BlackBird Books on 15 August 2018.

BlackBird Books authors Marah Louw, Grizelda Grootboom and Tumelo Buthelezi will be there, plus special guests Lebo Mashile, Bob Mabena and Bongani Fassie will be there to announce their forthcoming books!

Event details

Date: Wednesday 15 August 2018
Time: 18:00
Venue: Exclusive Books Rosebank, Johannesburg
RSVP: events@exclusivebooks.co.za for catering and communication purposes.

 

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The story of BlackBird Books

In August 2015 the face of South African publishing changed. This is the day that Thabiso Mahlape launched her new book imprint BlackBird Books. The imprint, incubated by Jacana Media, provides a platform and a publishing home to both new voices and the existing generation of black writers and narratives.

Mahlape honed her skills as publisher with a number of highly acclaimed bestsellers; the award-winning Endings & Beginnings by Redi Tlhabi, the ground-breaking My Father My Monster by McIntosh Polela and Malaika wa Azania’s Memoirs of a Born Free, all books which talk to multiple audiences on issues which impact us as South Africans. Other titles published include Bonnie Henna’s Eyebags & Dimples and Zoleka Mandela’s When Hope Whispers.

Mahlape described BlackBird Books as a groundbreaking move in the South African literary landscape and looks forward to continue pioneering and establishing a framework for new South African narratives. She says that her inspiration and direction for this list stems from varied sources, but there are two that stand out the most for her.

The first is the story of how, in 1962, 24-year-old Nat Nakasa gathered his friends to tell them of his dream of wanting to launch a literary magazine. Through the magazine, black writers were to speak of their own experiences, in their own voices. Just as Drum had given a megaphone to a generation of urban African journalists, a literary magazine was to do the same for poets and novelists. Nat Nakasa’s dream was never realised.

And when, in 1966, Nina Simone wrote about the pain of knowing that the world wouldn’t allow a ‘blackbird’ to fly we knew she was singing about the hardship of being a black woman, but it is not a stretch of the imagination to think that the reason why Nakasa’s dream was stillborn was because he too was a ‘blackbird’.

Categories Fiction Non-fiction South Africa

Tags BlackBird Books Exclusive Books Jacana Media Thabiso Mahlape