In conversation with Jessica Powers, owner of Catalyst Press

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JL Powers, or Jessica to friends

Jessica Powers, the owner of Catalyst Press, flew to South Africa for a whirlwind visit. She threw two lovely parties, one at Toasted in Johannesburg and one at Old Town Italy in Cape Town, and then she whooshed out again. (See the pictures below.)

Izak de Vries caught up with her in Cape Town, and then conducted this Q&A over email.

Hello, Jessica. Your parties involved cocktails, canapés and loads of laughter. No speeches. They were fun. These were quite unlike the typical press parties I often get invited to. What was the thinking behind these?

Well, I haven’t been to many press parties in South Africa, so I didn’t know any protocol, but I’m glad I didn’t and I’ll stay ignorant for future parties. And make no mistake, we’ll throw these types of parties again.

My thinking was entirely selfish. I hadn’t been able to come to South Africa since just before the lockdown, and I knew I couldn’t come for very long, but there was a long list of people I needed or wanted to meet. But I didn’t have time to meet with people one-on-one. So, I decided to create a space where we could all come together and connect, and where I could hug and say hi to authors and illustrators I’ve published or am publishing in the future, as well as industry professionals I’m connected to or would like to be connected to.

Beyond that, I definitely wanted to throw a couple of great parties with people who love books. Being a hostess, at my own home or somewhere else, is really fun for me.

Catalyst Press is a small company, but you have an impressive author list. Please explain to African readers what Catalyst Press is about.

I launched Catalyst Press in 2017 to publish African-authored and African-based books, from children’s books and young adult books, to graphic novels, to adult books. We have excellent distribution worldwide, with especially strong representation in North America via Consortium (an imprint of Ingram), but also in South Africa through our relationship with Protea Distribution. And we have a rights agency that sells foreign language, audio and film rights, and they’ve done remarkably well for us. We’ve come to be recognised as the only North American-based press (with a Cape Town office) that focuses exclusively on African books. We’ve also been remarkably blessed to receive excellent reviews in all the most impressive publications, and our books have won some amazing awards. Each year has got better and better.

But, to be perfectly honest, as amazing as that all sounds, I feel completely honoured and humbled to be trusted by the authors who let us publish their books. On occasion, that fact has made me cry, with both joy and humility.

Upon your arrival in South Africa, you texted me, saying: “I feel home.” Please explain your long connection to (South) Africa for those who do not know you.

I’ve apparently had a relationship with Africa all my life. As a graduate student, my dad (a geologist) worked on the Early Man project with Richard Leaky in northern Kenya. My mother joined him and, voilà, my life was conceived on the shores of Lake Turkana.

When I was eighteen, I went to work with street youth in Nairobi and that sparked an intense interest in African culture and life, precipitating the trajectory of my life.

It’s been almost 25 years since I started studying South African history, which launched me into graduate work in African history, with a special focus on Zimbabwe, then Mozambique, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal. I ended up with a two-year Foreign Language Area Studies scholarship to learn Zulu, followed by a Fulbright-Hays also to learn Zulu, and that brought me here! First to Imbali township outside Pietermaritzburg, and then to the rest of the country.

I was supremely lucky to be adopted in love by a family from Zimbabwe who live in Johannesburg, and then by a coloured family in the Athlone township in Cape Town. That has led to my parents being grandparents and great-grandparents of South African children, and my son being welcomed as brother and cousin and nephew. I can’t explain those relationships easily, except to say they are family.

South Africa does feel like home. I miss it when I’m not here, and I sink into it, gratefully, when I return.

Catalyst Press is the founder of #ReadingAfrica, an annual week-long celebration of African literature early in December which is open to all publishers, presses and readers who love, publish and read African literature. These are a bit like your cocktail parties, where all are welcome to have a good time. Why do you invite opposition presses to share their products during #ReadingAfrica week?

I think of small press publishers as sisters-in-arms. We’re not competitors; we’re all engaged in the good and difficult and important work of midwifing books into the world. I have just used a gazillion metaphors here – in arms implies war, midwifery implies birth/life. But I do see books as a life-and-death struggle – for truth and justice and peace and all good things. Also, I just think that in the fight to get people to read African books, we should all be involved.

I’m a bit of an evangelist for the “good news” of books, and particularly books from Africa. Since I’m quite fervent about it, it would be deeply hypocritical for me to try to control that or think that Catalyst Press is the only one who can preach the good news about African literature.

In the US, we have “Black History Month” (February), Hispanic Heritage Month (September), “Women’s History Month” (March) and so on and so forth. Nobody “owns” the history of these groups, though, of course, there are competing narratives. Nobody “owns” African literature either. Catalyst Press certainly doesn’t! So, our hope is that in time, #ReadingAfrica will be something completely out of Catalyst’s hands, with events and book displays in stores and libraries, with educators getting on board, authors holding their own events, etc, etc.

We live on different continents, and yet when I had a glass of wine with you the night before the party, I went home with a deep sense of universal humanness. So many things we talked about are so similar between what I experience in my hometown in the Eastern Cape, and what you experience in your hometown in Texas. We also chatted about press bias and the hurtful notion of cancel culture. Do you think books – stories, in other words – can help us form a deeper sense of human connectedness?

Oh, absolutely, this is precisely why I do what I do!

My boyfriend has never been to South Africa (something we’ll fix soon enough, in case you were wondering). He has a small farm in western Texas, and I recently gave him Story of an African farm by Olive Schreiner to read, because western Texas reminds me of the Karoo, and I knew he’d delight in the odd characters and dialect and that he’d revel in the descriptions of the land. And indeed he did. And then I went on a hunt for Olive Schreiner books for him, since the rest of her books are out of print, and luckily I found a few in a used bookstore in Kleinmond.

We are all connected in ways we can’t explain or understand, but we know it when it occurs, and books help us see it and feel it – across time, geography, culture, politics, religion and anything else you can think of that seems to get in our way when we let it.

Which Catalyst Press books can South African readers look forward to in 2023?

We’ve got a bunch in 2023! Hold on to your hats!

We have just released Pearl of the sea, a graphic novel written by Anthony Silverston and Raffaella Delle Donne and illustrated by Willem Samuel, and Bridget Pitt’s marvellous historical novel, Eye brother horn. Forthcoming in June and July are Kariba, another graphic novel by James Clarke, Daniel Clarke and Daniel Snaddon, as well as It’s just skin, silly, a picture book about the evolution of skin colour by experts Dr Nina Jablonski and Dr Holly McGee, illustrated by Cape Town’s own Karen Vermeulen. In September, we’re releasing Quality of mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu in North America, a book which South African readers have already read through the PRH edition; but I’m super-proud to be her publisher, too, and have to mention it here, even if our edition isn’t the one you all will see. But new to South Africa in September, we’re also releasing a hilarious bathroom photo book, Bait the toad by Kendra Powers, and Captive, a collection of short fiction from Short Story Day Africa. And in November, we’re publishing the debut novel of a Zimbabwean writer, Ndima ndima Tsitsi Mapepa. And finally, it’s not until January 2024, but we’re bringing out the translation of a graphic novel illustrated by Congolese illustrator Barly Baruti, Chaos in Kinshasa.

Whew, it’s a number of titles and quite a ride. I can’t wait.